MICHAEL CONLAN INSISTS you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The 20-year-old boxer secured at least a bronze medal tonight with a thrilling 22-18 win over French fighter Nordine Oubaali in the flyweight division at the Excel Arena.
He now will face Cuba’s Robeisy Ramirez Carrazana in the semi-final on Friday at 8.45pm for a place on the Olympic final. But Conlan says he’s not going to settle for the bronze.
“I’m not a bronze medalist yet because I’m not a medalist until I get a medal around my neck,” he told RTÉ afterwards. “And now I just have to change the colour, that’s all I have to do. There’s more in the tank definitely, this is only me warming up. You haven’t seen the best of Michael Conlan yet.
The Belfast-born boxer drew his first two rounds 5-5 and 7-7, before gaining in confidence, and beating Oubaali 10-6 in the final round. and he told Marty Morrissey that high performance chief Billy Walsh told him to make the third round count.
“In the last round Billy told me to go for it and I knew I had to and I have a sore head now; it was a hard fight and he hit hard. It was always going to be a tough fight and I’ve fought him three times and that was the third time I beat him but every time… it’s harder to beat someone three times than beating them twice.
“I knew he was going to come at me because he’s a come-forward fighter but our plan was to push him back and it did work in the end. I just had to be patient and keep my cool and keep to the plan.”
