Even at 31 Nicola Adams – of the dazzling feet and Beverly Hills smile – is chasing firsts. She was the first woman to represent England in boxing, the first English woman to win a medal at a major international boxing tournament and the first woman to win Olympic boxing gold at London 2012. And on Saturday she should become the first woman to win a Commonwealth Games title.
Adams booked her place in the 51kg flyweight final with a unanimous, if scraggy, points victory over Canada’s Mandy Bujold. Usually Adams is a boxing multilinguist, fluent on front foot and back, but she found Bujold’s awkward bobbing style tricky to comprehend. Only in flashes, in the first round and at the end of the third, did she connect with any consistency but the result was rarely in doubt.
Bujold, a Pan-American Games champion, likes to read the same verse from the Bible before each bout but neither God nor the judges were on her side. She was simply too passive. She won the second round on two of the scorecards but for much of the contest she weaved her left hand round in a circle, as if holding a wand, but failed to cast any spells.
“She was quite hard to pin down as she was moving around all the time,” Adams said. “It took me a little bit to find my timing and my range.”
Adams will face the 21-year-old Northern Ireland fighter Michaela Walsh in the final. Walsh was perhaps fortunate to get a split decision over India’s Pinki Rani in her semi-final but she believes her height and jab will cause Adams problems.
“It is a dream come true to fight her but I’m going for one colour,” she said. “She’s the golden girl and I’m only a baby compared to her but, if I can perform to the best of my ability, I can beat her.
“This is the first big competition I’ve had at this weight and I’m in the final. And when I’m in a bigger fight I perform better.”
Facing someone as sharp and experienced as Adams will not be Walsh’s only fresh challenge: for the finals the venue switches from a hall at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre here to the 11,000-seater Hydro. Adams, who boxed in front of 10,000 at the ExCel when she won gold at London 2012, knows she will not freeze on the big stage. Walsh can only hope.
Adams said she has not watched her opponent. She rarely does. She prefers to let them worry about her and let her coaches dictate tactics after they have scrutinised videotape but she is not taking anything for granted. “Definitely not,” she said. “Everyone is beatable on the right day. I’m just hoping my A-game is better than hers.”
She continues to enjoy her growing celebrity and says it is “surreal” how many athletes have been asking for selfies and photographs. She is a genuine star nowand it would be one of the biggest shocks of these Commonwealth Games if Walsh were to dim the glitter.
It was not only the boxers who struggled to draw breath on semi-finals day. The crowd found it hard too. As soon as one bout finished two more sluggers entered the ring. Among the more impressive fighters was the 21-year-old England bantamweight Qais Ashfaq, who was too good for the experienced Kenyan Benson Njangiru, a silver medallist from Delhi 2010.
Ashfaq is good friends with the former Olympic silver medallist and world champion Amir Khan and said his advice had helped him hugely. “He’s been amazing for me,” he said. “He was giving me loads of encouragement and made me feel a million times better.”
Certainly Ashfaq does not lack for confidence and fancies himself to beat Northern Ireland’s Michael Conlan, whom he meets in the final. “I know for a fact that as long as I perform to the tactics I’ll beat him,” he said. “I’m ready to go in there and win that gold medal.”
Conlan goes into their contest a little bloodied after his semi-final with the Welshman Sean McGoldrick went too early to the judges’ scorecards after an accidental clash of heads. Afterwards Khan, who was watching in the arena, called for the International Boxing Association to bring headguards back into the amateur game.
“There have been lots of cuts,” Khan said. “Headguards need to come back, especially when you’ve got fighters who are fighting nearly five times a week. It’s safer for the fighters.”
Another Englishman, the super-heavyweight Joe Joyce, went through to the final without a punch being thrown after his opponent Mike Sekabembe failed a medical. He will meet the Australian Joseph Goodall next.
However, England’s Sam Maxwell found his close friend Josh Taylor, from Scotland, just a little too clever for him in their lightweight semi-final.
“I was getting caught with clean shots stupidly,” said Maxwell, who lost a close decision. “I landed a couple and then I got a bit over-eager and lost it a bit. It was a close fight and it could have gone either way. I wish Josh the best, he is more than capable of winning gold. I just hope he does now. If he boxes like that, he will.”
