Ireland’s Grainne Walsh will return from the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool with a bronze medal as her bid to reach the final of the 65kg division fell short against Kazakhstan’s Aida Abikeyeva.<\/p>\n
The County Offaly woman secured a place on the podium with a quarter-final win over China’s Yang Liu on Wednesday, but found Abikeyeva a bridge too far as the Kazakh won on a unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28 x 4).<\/p>\n
Walsh sought a fast start, springing from her corner and immediately letting her hands go, backing Abikeyeva with accurate shots.<\/p>\n
However, Abikeyeva settled behind her long jab in what was a competitive opener and she had earned the nod from three of the five judges.<\/p>\n
Enjoying the height and reach advantage, Abikeyeva was happier to keep the fight at distance as Walsh tried to find a route inside. She enjoyed some success with a high work-rate, but was getting picked off with the Kazakh in something of a groove to extend her advantage going into the final round.<\/p>\n
Abikeyeva had a healthy lead as Walsh was forced to chase it in the third, throwing what she had at the Kazakh but is was not enough as her tournament ended with a bronze medal.<\/p>\n
The two remaining Irish boxers are in action on Saturday. Aoife O’Rourke will bid to upgrade her bronze medal when she takes on China’s Chengyu Yang in the 75kg semi-final, while Patsy Joyce will seek to do likewise against Spain’s Rafael Serrano Lozano in the men’s 55kg category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Grainne Walsh will return from the World Boxing Championships in Liverpool with a bronze medal as her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-133791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}