Aoife O’Rourke secured silver at the women’s world championships with a dominant start-to-finish semi-final win.
O’Rourke produced an aggressive front foot performance, which was far too much for Serbian Nikolina Gajic with O’Rourke scoring a unanimous point’s win.
The 27-year-old bossed the opening round with good use of the jab and landing two good left-right combinations. The judges giving the Castelrea boxer the verdict 3-2. 10-9, 9-10, 9-10, 10-9, 10-9.
The second round was dominated by O’Rourke throughout. Indeed, heavy body work doing the damage to Gajic who lost her gum shield with 1:46 of the round remaining.
The one way traffic continued as first Gajic received a one point deduction for holding and then a standing eight count. All five judges gave O’Rourke the round, 10-7, 10-9, 10-9, 10-8, 10-7.
In control, the Castlerea native stayed positive in the third round against the tiring home town boxer.
Indeed, an impressive double jab was landed with 94 seconds remaining; as the pressure remained and 12 seconds later Gajic received her second standing eight count of the contest.
Gajic did well to make the final bell, but it was O’Rourke’s day as the judge scored the bout 30-24, 29-27, 29-27, 30-25, 30-25.
🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈
Team Ireland's Aoife O'Rourke has won at least World silver.
She was the 5-0 winner of her semi-final against home boxer, Nikolina Gajic, and gave standing counts in rounds 2 and 3
Aoife will contest for gold on Sunday, against the winner of tonight’s meeting of… pic.twitter.com/ryKXxC3REF
— IABA (@IABABOXING) March 14, 2025
O’Rourke will box for gold on Saturday.
Whereas, younger sister Lisa will be in semi-final action later this evening.
