Ready to rumble

Boxing McLaughlin razor sharp ahead of World Championships debut Illies Golden Gloves welterweight William McLaughlin believes he is in top form ahead of his AIBA World Championships bow at the Mediolanum Forum in Milan this week. The Irish Senior Champion and EU Championships runner-up will face African Come Ndayishmiye tomorrow in the first round of the competition which is decided over the next two weeks in Northern Italy’s premier city. Speaking from the arena yesterday, McLaughlin told the Inish Times that he is pleased with how his preparations have gone at the Irish team’s training camp at the Institute of Sport in Bugeat in France. “I’m really happy with how the training camp went, I have a couple of black eyes to show from it but I feel very sharp and ready to go,” he said. “The level of sparring over there was world class and I held my own with Cubans and Germans who had fought in the Olympics.” William attended Monday night’s opening ceremony with other members of the Irish team which includes Olympic medalists Kenny Egan and Paddy Barnes. “The ceremony was a brilliant experience, there are 140 different countries here and it’s a great buzz to be part of such a big event. “The arena itself is huge, it holds 10 or 12,000, I was in there this morning to watch Declan Geraghty’s win and the atmosphere was amazing.” Looking ahead to tomorrow’s bout, William admits that he is in the dark about his opponent. “I don’t know anything about him at all, Billy Walsh had to return home for a couple of days because of a family bereavement but when he comes back we’ll sit down with the video analysis guy and prepare for the fight.” Meanwhile, two of William’s clubmates, Sadie Duffy and Stephen Friel have been elected to the eight member Ulster Boxing Council with Sadie appointed as Honorary Secretary. Well known in local boxing circles as a referee, Sadie is looking forward to her two year tenure on the council which officiates over all nine Ulster counties. “Our main focus is to prepare our senior boxers for the Commonwealth Games in India in October of next year,” she says. “I believe we have a good working executive in place now from Council level down to the County Board representatives and our ethos will be to involve everyone in Ulster boxing.” Illies Golden Gloves coach Friel’s appointment to the council is part of a new policy by the Ulster IABA to have coaches involved in the administration of the sport at a senior level. “We believe its important to have four coaches on the eight member council as they are directly in contact with the boxers,” explained Sadie.