A box­ing pro­gramme that start­ed two years ago is set to be put to the test when the AI­BA World Cham­pi­onships get un­der way on Fri­day (Oc­to­ber 22) and will run un­til No­vem­ber 8 in Bel­grade, Ser­bia.

Coach Reynold Cox and Olympic fight­er Nigel Paul are hop­ing to use the cham­pi­onships as a gauge for the lo­cal box­ers, ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France.

Paul, who missed out on qual­i­fy­ing for the Tokyo Olympics in Japan held in Ju­ly/Au­gust, wants to be­gin his climb to the top 20 box­ers in the world. He told Guardian Me­dia Sports this is an im­por­tant fea­ture of the World Cham­pi­onships, it al­lows box­ers to get world rank­ings.

"The World Cham­pi­onships for me and the rest of the team is very im­por­tant. It's where we ac­tu­al­ly get our world rank­ing. As you know for the first time in the his­to­ry of Trinidad, we have five box­ers in the world rank­ings, so giv­ing the new box­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go out there and ac­tu­al­ly have a world rank­ing is im­por­tant for the team. And for me to get back in­to the top 20," Paul ex­plained.

He is one of five box­ers who will be test­ing their skills fol­low­ing a two-year pro­gramme in Bel­mont, that was sup­port­ed fi­nan­cial­ly by the man­age­ment and staff of Lall and Com­pa­ny Cus­tom Bro­kers, Dock­side Food Com­pa­ny (Richard Ty­wany), Tradewinds Trav­el, Jo Sing Lim­it­ed, the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms, the O/C of Avi­a­tion Busi­ness Ltd, Navin Madoo and Artemis En­er­gy Lim­it­ed.

An­oth­er Olympic box­er Aaron Prince will at­tempt to make up for a first-fight ex­it in Tokyo when he was beat­en by An­drej Cse­mez in the mid­dleweight cat­e­go­ry. Al­so on the team are Bless­ing Wal­drop (63kg), An­tho­ny Joseph (60kg) and Don­nell Phillips (57kg). Tian­na Guy, an­oth­er box­er to have ben­e­fit­ed from the pro­gramme, will head out to Ire­land for a train­ing camp.

Paul missed out on the Tokyo Games based on an in­fe­ri­or rank­ing to his coun­ter­parts but he told Guardian Me­dia Sports, he is ready to com­pete in Ser­bia.

"I had enough time to pre­pare, I had a lengthy pe­ri­od to get over what­ev­er in­juries I had, while the coach­ing staff re­al­ly did push the box­ers who did not go to the Olympics, as we kept on train­ing and now it's on to the next phase."

Mean­while, Cox de­scribed the pro­gramme as a step­ping stone to where he wants his fight­ers to be.

He said: "I think this is like the back­bone of what we want to do for the guys. We have five guys go­ing to the World Cham­pi­onships, we have Tian­na Guy go­ing to a train­ing camp in Ire­land and we al­so have a few box­ers prepar­ing for the Pan Amer­i­can Youth Ju­niors.

"So we've been prepar­ing very hard with these guys for the last two years in a pan­dem­ic, which has been very dif­fi­cult for us in Trinidad. Peo­ple can now see where we are as op­posed to the rest of the world be­cause we re­al­ly want to do well.

"Next year is Com­mon­wealth Games and we re­al­ly want to be pre­pared for that."