T&T Olympian Nigel Paul kept the T&T flag fly­ing high on Sun­day when he ad­vanced to the quar­ter­fi­nals of the AI­BA World Box­ing Cham­pi­onships in Bel­grade, Ser­bia, by de­feat­ing Ay­oub Ghad­fa of Spain 4-1 in the Su­per-Heavy­weight di­vi­sion.

The re­sult mean that he will now face Be­rat Acar of Turkey on Tues­day.

Coach Reynold Cox said it is the new Nigel Paul since the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games in Brazil in 2016. At that Olympics, Paul was de­mol­ished in the first round by Niger­ian Efe Ajag­ba af­ter two min­utes, 44 sec­onds of his pre­lim­i­nary round bout.

Ghad­fa though, was no push-around, the Spaniard be­gin­ning his bout with an ear­ly bar­rage of punch­es, which Paul ei­ther eas­i­ly elud­ed or fend­ed off with his sol­id de­fence. But a trade-off of punch­es end­ed the open­ing round.

The sec­ond round was not much of a dif­fer­ence, as both fight­ers went for big scor­ing shots and though the three-round con­test re­quired the out­burst of punch­es, it summed up the fight in gen­er­al, on­ly that Paul had tagged more than his op­po­nent.

Cox, who has been with Paul in a two-year de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ahead of the Cham­pi­onships, told Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day that Paul showed his met­tle to progress.

"It was a good fight, it was chal­leng­ing but with Paul, he rose to the chal­lenge and showed the kind of met­tle he is made up of and there­fore he showed that he has the met­tle to go as far as he wants to.

"The bout was go­ing here and there, up to the sec­ond round and to the last, where he had to put out every­thing to get on the judges' scores and this is Nigel Paul now af­ter Rio.

"We had a very quick out­ing at the Olympic Games and now he is back on the main stage again, show­ing he is made up of some good met­tle. He has to weath­er the storm from this guy to ac­tu­al­ly edge him," Cox ex­plained.

Paul is the lone T&T box­er in the cham­pi­onships to date fol­low­ing de­cent per­for­mances but loss­es to An­tho­ny Joseph, Don­nell Phillips, Aaron Prince and Bless­ing Wal­dropt over the past week.

Cox has al­ready done his re­search and as­sess­ment on Paul's op­po­nent Acar, say­ing: "He was at the World Cham­pi­onships in 2019 in a low­er weight di­vi­sion. I think he will present some dif­fer­ent tac­ti­cal prob­lems for us, in terms of him be­ing a short­er box­er, but def­i­nite­ly, Paul has done well against short­er guys, as he is able to use his jabs and up­per­cuts on the in­side, so we're hop­ing to over­pow­er this guy."