It may or may not be a warning sign that the most impressive women's lightweight in Baku right now is not necessarily Katie Taylor. At least not after the quarter-final bouts which earned Taylor at least a bronze medal, then lined her up against another old rival, Yana Alekseevna.
Alekseevna is from Azerbaijan. Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan. Just in case anyone needed reminding. The judges here, presumably, will be told to forget.
Although it wouldn’t be a proper boxing tournament if there wasn’t some talk of “home” decisions. Not every boxer from Azerbaijan has been winning against expectation, yet some of them possibly have. Indeed Darren O’Neill got a harsh reminder of how fickle boxing judging can still be, even when there isn’t any home fighter involved.
"I've boxed many people, in their own backyard, plenty of times," said Taylor. "In China, I boxed a Chinese girl, in the final of a World Championship. I boxed Russians, in their home nations. I actually enjoy it. The atmosphere is going to be fantastic, and these are the kind of fights I cherish.
“There’s nothing I can do about the judging, or it being their backyard, or to change the home crowd. I just go in and try to do my best, go into every fight trying to win as easy as I can. She [Alekseevna] is a very clever boxer, so these are the kind of fights that I love.”
No introduction needed
Indeed Taylor and Alekseevna will need no introduction, their semi-final set for tomorrow at 8.45am Irish time: they met as recently as last November, at the World Championships in Jeju City, South Korea, where Taylor beat Alekseevna in the final bout to earn a fifth successive World title. It was unanimous, in the end, although the three judges had a dissenting voice in the first and third round.
In the meantime, Alekseevna looks to have improved. Her quarter-final bout here, immediately before Taylor’s, saw her fight the Russian Zinaida Dobrynina, the current featherweight World Champion, now moved up a weight. And Alekseevna ruled it, winning all four rounds, much to the clear frustration of the Russian (and the delight of the home crowd).
Then Taylor faced off against Swedish teenager Ida Lundblad, and in truth it wasn’t much of a contest. The Bray fighter put in another display so chock-full of class that Lundblad never once threatened; the only mild surprise in the end was that the judges didn’t award all four rounds even more favourably to Taylor.
“Yeah, the judging seems to be a small bit inconsistent, at times, but as long as I keep winning, that’s all that matters,” admitted Taylor. “This fight, I felt a lot better, a lot sharper, than the first one. Because it’s always tough to get over the first one. Now, this is the most enjoyable part, when you’re in the competition, boxing for a place in the final. Because I’m not settling for a bronze. I always come into these competitions hoping to come away with a gold medal. So I won’t really start to relax until I have a gold medal around my neck.”
Properly stunned
It still feels like Taylor’s gold medal to lose, although O’Neill, the Irish boxing captain, definitely felt like he’d lost out on a bronze medal, in his quarter-final against Gevorg Manukian from the Ukraine. Manukian took the first round, then O’Neill hit back to win the second and third – and, like most of the people inside Baku’s Crystal Hall, was properly stunned when the judges awarded it to the Ukrainian.
“To win the second and third round, not the fight, well, I’m disillusioned about that,” said O’Neill. “I thought I landed more punches, that it was my fight, and I won it. And that’s heart-breaking. I’m going home feeling like I won that fight. Unfortunately I’m not going home with the medal on the mantelpiece.
“Look, the judges are outside the ring for a reason, and I can’t control that. When you have someone that big trying to hit you in the face you don’t have much time to think about anything else. I’ll try get over this, but it is crushing. Unfortunately, I’ve been beaten in too many of these medal fights. ”
Indeed, at 29, and the self-proclaimed “granddaddy” of the Irish boxing team, O’Neill is no stranger to the occasional injustices of boxing’s scoring system - despite some repeated refinements. The important thing is to not let it get to you once inside the ring - and he has no fear that Taylor will let that or the Azerbaijani crowd get to her.
"I think Katie has so much experience that there's no way she will let that get to her. But you get a bit of that everywhere you go. Look back at Kenny Egan, in Beijing, beaten by the Chinese. I was beaten in Moscow by a Russian. There are loads of cases. But then Brendan Irvine has already beaten an Azerbaijani.
“There’s always different ideas of how you can control that, in the scoring. Still, the system can be objective at times. If you had Tyson and Ali judging a fight, they would look at it a little different. But again, that’s out of our control. It just didn’t happen for me out here.”
Taylor, meanwhile, moves on towards an 18th championship gold medal in complete control not just of her opponents but her own destiny.
