LAST UPDATE | 27 May 2022
ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER memorable day in the ring for Irish amateur boxing.
A youthful and inexperienced team will take home with them two medals from the men’s Elite European Championships in Yerevan, Armenia, with two international debutants at this level guaranteeing at least bronze as they advanced to their respective semi-finals.
Both Galway’s Gabriel Dossen (Olympic BC Galway) and Bangor’s Dylan Eagleson (St Paul’s ABC Antrim) have also secured €25,000 each in Sport Ireland next year, which should only help to accentuate their supreme talents on the road to the Paris Olympics in 2024.
Stylish southpaw Dossen edged past an excellent Norwegian in the shape of Mindaugas Gedminas on a 4-1 split decision to advance to the last four at middleweight (75kg).
It caps a remarkable couple of weeks for his club, Olympic BC Galway, who also boast among their ranks the newly crowned women’s light-middleweight (70kg) world champion Lisa O’Rourke, a Roscommon native.
🚨Men's European Championship result
— IABA (@IABABOXING) May 27, 2022
#TeamIreland 75kg Gabriel Dossen is through to the semi finals, with at least a 🥉, following a 4-1 win over Norway pic.twitter.com/A9elBq6v4w
The rapid-fisted Dossen landed the more eye-catching and harder shots over three tightly contested rounds and never relinquished control of the bout, forcing a standing eight-count of the desperate Scandinavian in the third.
Afterwards, he made the gesture of sitting on the bottom rope in order to let his opponent depart the ring first. The pair enjoyed a pleasant-looking conversation, saluting each other, as Dossen progressed and the impressive Gedminas exited stage left empty-handed.
Dossen has long been touted as one of Irish amateur boxing’s leading talents, winning back-to-back World and European Youth bronze medals in 2016 and 2017. He won his first national Elite title in 2019 but later missed out on the Tokyo Olympic qualifiers with a knee injury.
The 22-year-old will box on Sunday for a place in the final.
So too will the 19-year-old Co. Down man Eagleson, who boxes out of the St Paul’s club in Belfast. Remarkably, this tournament in Armenia has been Eagleson’s first ever outing as an Elite — he is yet to compete for a national championship at senior level.
Eagleson has however won a national U22 title and took home bronze from the European U22s a couple of months ago.
🚨Men's European Championship result
— IABA (@IABABOXING) May 27, 2022
#TeamIreland 54kg Dylan Eagleson is through to the semi finals, with at least a 🥉, following a 4-1 win over Spain pic.twitter.com/64ROIno9EA
There was no childish innocence about his 4-1 split-decision victory over Spain’s Tokyo Olympic quarter-finalist Gabriel Escobar.
Eagleson dropped the first round 3-2 on the judges’ scorecards but boxed smartly behind his jab to take the second 4-1, meaning he led on one card and the bout was level on the other four going into the last.
Escobar, extremely awkward, met his match in the Bangor southpaw who only kicked things up a gear in the last, edging it to the point that he was confident enough even to showboat in the final 30 seconds. Eagleson and Zaur Antia in the Irish corner appeared assured of the win in advance of the official verdict, and with good reason.
On Eagleson’s superb victory, Tokyo Olympian Emmet Brennan stated on Twitter that he “didn’t think [Eagleson's] breakthrough was going to happen that quick. Mick Conlan potential in this kid. Could be the next big star from Ireland.”
Dylan Eagelson bobs and weaves into the semi-finals of the European Championships and the Irish coaches are loving it. Most importantly he can really fight pic.twitter.com/RYn8BhSY6H
— Kevin Byrne (@KevByrneBox) May 27, 2022
Earlier on Friday, England’s Kiaran MacDonald 4-1 bested Dublin’s Seán Mari on a 4-1 split in their 51kg quarter, while Dundalk man Rickey Nesbitt competed gamely with Bulgaria’s European U22 bronze medallist Ergyuna Sebahtin but lost out on a unanimous decision. At 60kg, meanwhile, Belfast’s JP Hale was seen off 4-1 by relentless Georgian Artyush Gomtsayan.
