Heavyweight Jack Marley finally brought a much-needed win to the Irish boxing team with a performance full of heart and aggression in his first Olympic Games. The 21-year-old Dubliner won by split decision 4-1, fortune finally swinging in Ireland’s favour in the North Paris Arena after Dean Clancy and Gráinne Walsh lost by split decision, while Aidan Walsh was beaten 4-0 by Frenchman Makam Traore.
The victory puts Marley into the quarter-final of the 16-man field, just one win away from an Olympic medal. He meets Daviat Boltaev of Tajikistan, the number two seed, in the next round on Thursday night.
Marley lit up the ring as soon as the bout began, pushing back his taller Polish opponent Mateuz Bereznicki from the bell. Aggressive and willing, Bereznicki barely knew what hit him as Marley threw lefts and rights driving his taller opponent on to the ropes.
While there was a dangerous jab coming back at Marley, his high-energy, go-forward performance earned him the first round 4-1. More of the same thrilling action earned the second 4-1, with an understandably less high-tempo third round sealing the deal in an eye-catching first fight.
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“Yeah, it was my Olympic debut. I knew I needed to start as I mean to go on and that’s what I done,” said Marley. “I got told have no regrets two minutes before I stepped into the ring and I’ll always remember that.
“I think I hyped it up a bit too much in myself. But I was cool as a cucumber going into that, and I thought I showed that.”
A tearful Gráinne Walsh expressed deep frustration after her 4-1 defeat at the hands of Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori. The taller Hamori tied up the Irish boxer and smothered her throughout the three rounds. In doing so the 28-year-old’s natural ability to fight inside, close to her opponent, was heavily curtailed.
Walsh lost the first round 3-2 with Hamori looking to land swinging rights from a distance. Although the Irish boxer upped her aggression in the second round the judging went 5-0 against her, while her Hungarian opponent was warned and deducted a point for holding.
But it was all uphill from there and the deduction made little difference to the outcome as Hamori’s long levers and larger frame suffocated Walsh, preventing her from getting into any kind of flow.
“I do feel like he could have warned her more because it didn’t stop her,” said Walsh. “It actually encouraged her to continue doing it and I was getting continuously frustrated. I don’t know if you could see that in there, but I tried not to let my emotions get the better of me.
“I’m just frustrated at how that fight went and look, I can beat that girl, you know, 10 times out of 10. But it just didn’t happen today.”
Bronze medallist from Tokyo Aidan Walsh bowed out of the draw 4-0 against Frenchman Makan Traore amid controversy over the referee instructing him to fight before deducting a point in the third round for holding. Walsh won the first round on all the cards, scoring and moving away after the referee instructed both boxers to engage.
The judging was turned around in the second round when Traore won it 4-1 despite Walsh continuing with his southpaw tactics of hitting one-point shots and swirling out of range. The Korean referee then told Walsh to fight more, which his team suggested was essentially an instruction to change tactics.
Walsh was then hit with the shot of the match, a crunching backhand right at the beginning of the third round before being deducted the point for holding.
“I really don’t get that because when Aidan goes on the back foot it’s a tactic, there’s a rationale behind it. He doesn’t run for the sake of running,” said Irish team coach Damian Kennedy.
“If he was inactive ... we were conscious of it on the back of the last tournament, that he needed to be active with his jab while on the back foot and I thought he did that. I thought he was using his jab to stop his opponent from pressing. Everything we asked of him he implemented. So, I don’t know what the trouble was with that, to be honest.”
