Fresh from delivering Northern Ireland\u2019s only gold medal in the ring in the Commonwealth Games in July, Jon McConnell got Team Ireland\u2019s European Elite Championships off to an emphatic winning start in Bulgaria on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
McConnell is part of a 14-strong Ireland squad in Sofia that includes a late change after two-time Olympic champion Kellie Harrington was forced to withdraw with a hand injury. Kellie McLoughlin has instead travelled, competing in the women\u2019s lightweight division.<\/p>\n
A member of the Holy Trinity club in Belfast, McConnell made short work of Turkey\u2019s Necat Ekinci in their 70kg last-32 bout.<\/p>\n
Ekinci, a Paris Olympian and a former World Youth Champion, had no answer to McConnell dominance. The back-to-back national elite champion dictated the tempo from start to finish, claiming a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old will next fight Damian Durkacz for a place in the quarter-finals on Saturday after the Pole\u2019s unanimous victory over Aleksandr Trofimcuk of Lithuania.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was good,\u201d McConnell said of his opening fight. \u201cThe first one is always the hardest, everyone knows that, but I felt good in there, I felt sharp.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the first two rounds won so I took the last round off. In these tournaments, it\u2019s down to experience, boxing back-to-back days, but I\u2019m ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
On his approach facing Ekinci, McConnell added: \u201cEverything was working to perfection. Those were the tactics, to use the jab early and just dominate from the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gave me an extra push to get the team off to a good start, it\u2019s an individual sport but we\u2019re here as Team Ireland, and I was happy to be first on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jude Gallagher is next up for Ireland in the men\u2019s 60kg division during Friday\u2019s afternoon session. The Derry lightweight will face Slovakia\u2019s Maksym Bocarov for a place in the last 16. Paris Olympian Dean Clancy will be in action on Friday evening, facing Germany\u2019s Mohamed Siala in the men\u2019s 65kg division.<\/p>\n
Heavyweight Jack Marley\u2019s last-16 opponent has also been determined for their fight on Sunday, with the 23-year-old set to take on fellow Paris Olympian Aryan Saed Panah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh from delivering Northern Ireland\u2019s only gold medal in the ring in the Commonwealth Games in July, Jon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1812,24793,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-627798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-boxing","tag-glasgow","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}