Flyweight Huang Hsaio Wen, a two-time national champion, took on Poland's European Junior Championship silver medal winner Wiktoria Sadej and controlled the bout throughout using her height advantage and took the win by a unanimous decision.

A first round technical knockout over Amel Chebbi of Tunisia saw Turkey's Neriman Istik continue her impressive run in Sofia while Italian Irma Testa and Russia's Ekaterina Paltceva also recorded big wins, with Paltceva's 3-0 win over Argentina's dangerous Anyelen Espinosa a stand-out performance.

In the lightweight division Wu Pei Ye Began was giving away 15 centimetres to her opponent Ann-Marie Kelly, Australia's youth champion, but who made little of the height difference by emerging from a shaky start to impress the judges and come away with a 2-1 win.

Ireland's Ciara Ginty and Monica Floridia also emerged with 2-1 wins in the lightweight division, as did Hungarian Daniella Posta, while Sweden's Agnus Alexiusson and American Jajaira Gonzalez made short work of their respective opponents, Bobbi Been of the Netherlands and Poland's Justyna Walas.

Middleweight Chen Nien Chin secured a hat-trick of wins for Chinese Taipei with a superb unanimous points win over home favourite and Bulgarian national champion Mihaela Nikolova to advance to the quarter-final stage.

Valentina Khalzova of Kazakhstan, Poland's Elzbieta Wojcik, Christine Desmond of Ireland and Australia's Caitlin Barker all looked good as they eased through to the next round.

Barker's teammate Jesse Travers proved too good for Venezuelan Antoni Armas in their clash in the men's bantamweight division, which also saw wins for Long Wang of China, Japan's Arashi Morisaka, Briton Peter McGrail and home fighter Dushko Mihaylov.

Finland's Muhammad Abdilrasoon ended Katlo Mosenke's interest in the light welterweight class with a scorching performance to secure a unanimous points victory while Japan's Toshihiro Suzuki was equally comprehensive in despatching Sebastian Konsek of Poland.

Ukraine's Ramil Gadzhyiev (right) won a superb contest with Ireland's Luke Thomas ©AIBA



Chinese Taipei's Hung-Ming Pan could not match the efforts of his female counterparts as he went down to Viktor Petrov of Ukraine while Belarusian Aliaksandr Vahchylka and Bibert Tumenov of Russia turned on the power as the scored technical knockout wins over Guillaume Pavillon of Mauritius and Algeria's Azeddine Lameche, respectively.

Defending middleweight champion Ramil Gadzhyiev of Ukraine and Ireland's national champion Luke Thomas squared up in the bout of the day as both boxers went all out to progress to the next stage.

Despite a 3-0 win for Gadzhyiev, Thomas showed some touches of class and no small amount of determination but he could not overcome the classy Ukrainian who will now be the favourite to go on and take the gold again.

Croatian Luka Plantic, Bekzhan Bakirov of Kazakhstan, South Korean Yun Juho and Mohamed Mabrouki of Tunisia all secured relatively comfortable wins while Nikolay Chavdarov delighted the crowd in the Armeec Arena by seeing off the challenge of Frenchman Ezze-Eddine Ben Nasser.

Tomorrow sees the men's light flyweight, lightweight, welterweight and light heavyweight competitions continue in Sofia.

The Championships  are due continue through until April 24.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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