LESSONS learned outside the ropes could stand to Carly McNaul when she steps between them at the NEC Arena tomorrow.
‘Wrecking Ball’ secured a second consecutive Commonwealth Games silver medal with a straightforward victory over 19-year-old Ugandan Teddy Nakimuli this afternoon.
Bizarrely, the 19-year-old Ugandan still leaves Birmingham with a bronze medal, having received a bye into the light-fly quarter-finals before Sierra Leone’s Canadian-born, Offaly-based reigning Irish bantamweight champion Sara Haghighat-Joo failed to make the weight for their last eight bout.
None of that matters to McNaul, of course, who now faces Nikhat Zareen after the classy Indian got the better of England’s Savannah Stubley.
Having been crowned World champion back in May, Zareen takes serious momentum into tomorrow’s decider – but east Belfast woman McNaul hopes the experiences shared during a Jordanstown training camp can stand to her once the bell sounds.
“I have dreamed of that fight from the day I knew she was going to the Commonwealth Games,” said the 33-year-old.
“We met each other at the sparring camp and I had a great spar with her. The coaches will obviously have good tactics and I will stick to what they are saying and I think and hope it will pay off.
“She is very good. She is not world champion for no reason but I’m going to fight her really well. I watched them two spar, England and India, and they’re both very technically good.
“But the English girl stood up tall and was getting caught where I stayed small and had good head movement and she struggled with that. I’m going in there with that sort of game-plan, hopefully it works.
“I am buzzing. All the hard work I’ve been doing is finally paying off and each performance is getting better and better, and we are saving the best performance for last.”
Despite her relative inexperience, and the weight to see any competitive action, Nakimuli took everything McNaul threw and kept coming forward.
“She was some woman - I thought I had a big engine.
“She kept taking punches and then at one point I switched off and she came at me. Then I thought I needed to switch back on here. Fair play to her she had some engine.”
And while she was delighted to land silver on the Gold Coast four years ago, it hasn’t even entered McNaul’s thoughts in Birmingham.
“That’s no medal to me,” she smiled, “nobody remembers the silver. I want the gold.”
