Eric Donovan is hopeful Daina Moorehouse and Jack Marley can lift Team Ireland's boxers with two strong performances this evening, with Marley on the cusp of at least a bronze medal as he squares up to the formidable Tajikistani Davlat Boltaev.
RTÉ boxing analyst Donovan was impressed with Marley's showing in his first outing in Paris last Sunday.
The Monkstown BC fighter booked his place in the quarter-finals of the men's 92kg division with a split decision victory over Poland's Mateusz Bereznicki.
Now, the 21-year-old takes on the teak-tough Boltaev - an Asian Games gold medallist who will be favourite to make the semis.
Donovan says Marley will need to produce the fight of his life to win, but highlighted the issues Georgi Kushitashvili gave Boltaev last time out as evidence that he can be rattled.
"Jack is up against a very difficult opponent, but you know what? He has the ability if he can put in a career-best performance to overturn Boltaev," Donovan told RTÉ's Olympics Podcast.
"Boltaev is a serious operator - Asian Games gold medallist, 25 years of age.
"What I liked about Jack's performance the last time against his Polish opponent, even though he beat him before, he just came out with real gusto. You could tell he's up for it. He's going for it.
"Boltaev won in his last-16 round against Kushitashvili of Georgia and the Georgian ran him so close. It was the closest of margins... I hope that the team wil be looking at the video analysis of that and just showing Jack what Boltaev doesn't like.
"He likes when you're standing off him and he picks you off. He loves a nice easy type of boxing where things are going the way he wants them to go. But if you jump on him, put pressure on him, let the shots go, high-volume work, high-volume punching, then he will not like it at all.
"I expect that kind of performance from Jack and I would love to see him get over the line."
Moorehouse faces French fighter Wassila Lkhadiri in her first bout in the 50kg (flyweight) division.
The Irishwoman lost to Lkhadiri last year at the European Games in Poland, but Donovan believes she has since improved.
"Daina is a different fighter to when she lost to her French opponent last year in the quarter-final of the European Games," he said.
"She lost on a split decision, but she was coming back from an injury, she'd a really bad injury with her foot. Over the last year she's had a good lot of high performance development, surrounded by professional coaches and support staff.
"She's really learned so much. She's had high-level training camps, high-level sparring. I was speaking to her the other day, she's very very confident, and she did say to me, 'I'm a different fightter than I was last year', so that's good. She has that quiet confidence within her."
It's been a mixed bag for the boxers so far. On Wednesday night Aoife O'Rourke suffered a surprise defeat to Poland's Elzbieta Wojcik in her last-16 middleweight bout.
It was a scrappy affair, with O'Rourke afterwards airing her disappointment at her performance.
However former WBA Super Bantamweight world champion Bernard Dunne has labelled the judge's scoring of the loss a "disgraceful decision".
"I don’t know how they came to the decision that they did," Dunne told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
"But for me that was a disgraceful decision. On the scoring criteria they use for bouts, one of them being competitiveness, unless this bout was a wrestling match there wasn’t much competitiveness from the opponent," Dunne said.
He added that he felt the referee was "extremely poor" in not dealing with Wojcik’s holding more effectively.
Wojcik tried to rush O'Rourke from the opening bell, but she was swinging wildly and lost a point after repeated warnings for holding.
The Polish fighter also received multiple warnings in the third round as she continued to hold and slap but avoided any further sanction
"He gave her a warning early on and then just cautioned her for the remainder of the bout. Again, I’m just confused how they came to the decision that they did," Dunne added.
"For me, this is probably the first real controversial decision that I’ve seen so far throughout the competition."
7pm Women's 50kg (flyweight) round of 16: Wassila Lkhadiri (Fra) v Daina Moorehouse
9.08pm Men's 92kg (heavyweight) quarter-finals: Jack Marley v Davlat Boltaev (Taj)
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