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Brett Mather from the Mandurah Boxing Club - is the only representative from Western Australia to compete in the World Youth Games.
Brett is now in Singapore and will be competing on the Elimination Bouts on the 21st August
Many thanks to Coach Phil Crawley - the information below is the latest on the success of Brett Mather
West Australian boxer Brett Mather has moved through to the gold medal match for the 60kg division at the Youth Olympic Games after fighting back to beat Mexican Daniel Echeverria 8-7.
The lanky Mexican was an unknown quantity having missed the last junior world titles before the Games.
Echeverria came out strongly, forcing Mather to open up early and concede two quick points with clean shots to the head. Echeverria took the 2-0 lead into the second round but Mather did not look rattled and had been waiting and watching for the right time to strike.
It came very early in the second when a series of straight rights connected with Echeverria’s head scoring four crowd lifting points.
“It was straight rights that did it for me in the end, that’s where I got on top of him,” Mather said.
“He’s a very tough boxer – we’ve known that since I found out I was fighting a Mexican they are always very hard fighters.
“But I just stuck in there and now I’m on the way to the gold medal fight.”
With his family watching from the stands, Mather took a 4-3 lead into the third round where he again looked to expose his opponent with jabs and straight rights.
Both fighters came out firing in the third when Echeverria pulled back another point to even things out. From there it was a fairly even fight, with both Echeverria and Mather going tit-for-tat until the final score of 8-7 to the Australian.
Mather said he had been spurred on to greater things by his Australian teammate Damien Hooper who defeated world No 1 Irishman Joe Ward in three rounds last night.
“He’s my role model for sure,” Mather said.
“Last night he put himself out there beating the world No 1 and I really want to do what he’s doing.
“We are good mates, the same age with a lot of the same interests so yeah – I was very impressed with Hoops and happy to be winning too.”
Mather will fight for gold on Wednesday.
