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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Paul: I want to make fight as easy as possible

by

Walter Alibey
1212 days ago
20211102
T&T boxer Nigel Paul, right, is declared the winner by referee Aleksandr Khamidov, centre, after defeating Spanish boxer Ayoub Ghadfa, 4-1, in the round of 16 super heavyweight bout on Sunday at the AIBA World Boxing Championships in Serbia. Picture courtesy AIBA

T&T boxer Nigel Paul, right, is declared the winner by referee Aleksandr Khamidov, centre, after defeating Spanish boxer Ayoub Ghadfa, 4-1, in the round of 16 super heavyweight bout on Sunday at the AIBA World Boxing Championships in Serbia. Picture courtesy AIBA

T&T box­er Nigel Paul in­tends to make Tues­day's AI­BA World Box­ing Cham­pi­onship en­counter against Be­rat Acar of Turkey as easy and as sim­ple as pos­si­ble at the Stark Are­na in Bel­grade, Ser­bia.

He will take the ring from about 9:30 am to 10 am on Tues­day morn­ing his coach Reynold Cox has said.

A win for Paul will put him in­to the semi­fi­nal round of his Su­per Heavy­weight di­vi­sion fight, and in with a chance to be among the medals. Paul spent the whole of Mon­day prepar­ing men­tal­ly for his coun­ter­part who he said is short­er than him.

" I feel al­right, I feel good, I feel con­fi­dent. So far you see the suc­cess we've been hav­ing, so with every fight, the con­fi­dence goes up and I just have a sense of readi­ness right now.

Against Acar, clear­ly, there is a height ad­van­tage so we're go­ing to use that in the fight. Ob­vi­ous­ly, a short­er fight­er com­ing in to fight some­body taller will have to force the is­sue, come in and ap­ply pres­sure, so we will have to an­swer with some up­per­cuts, body shots, keep him on the out­side and make the fight as clear and as easy as pos­si­ble," Paul said.

He is fresh from a bruis­ing en­counter with Spain's Ay­oub Ghad­fa in the round of 16 which he even­tu­al­ly won 4-1. But Cox has warned against un­der­es­ti­mat­ing fight­ers, not­ing that at this lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion, every fight is a dif­fi­cult one.

Paul said his fo­cus will be on ex­e­cu­tion, know­ing that the room for er­ror is very slim to non-ex­is­tent.

" We have just been hav­ing talks and dis­cus­sions, my­self and the coach­es to en­sure that my head stays on and to en­sure we ex­e­cute on what­ev­er plan or strat­e­gy we have for the fight. So it's just about trust­ing the work and ex­e­cut­ing on the tac­tics that we've put in place," Paul not­ed.

A vic­to­ry will al­so put Paul in line for much-need­ed cash in­cen­tives at the tour­na­ment, cour­tesy of AI­BA.


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