T&T's su­per heavy­weight box­er Nigel Paul is set to be the next lo­cal box­er to earn a qual­i­fy­ing berth at the Tokyo Olympic Games, from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8.

And if that hap­pens, he will fol­low in the foot­steps of his com­pa­tri­ot Aaron Prince who has made good on his fourth at­tempt at qual­i­fi­ca­tion at the age of 32 years, due to the can­cel­la­tion of the Amer­i­c­as Qual­i­fiers caused by the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

Prince, a T&T mid­dleweight fight­er, was on May 13 re­vealed as a qual­i­fi­er in the Amer­i­c­as re­gion, based on his fourth-ranked po­si­tion in his di­vi­sion, which came due to the ex­it of some box­ers.

The qual­i­fiers were set to take place in Ar­genti­na last week, how­ev­er, the World Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (WBA) agreed to se­lect fight­ers based on their in­di­vid­ual rank­ing, as the qual­i­fiers could not have been held.

Yes­ter­day, di­rec­tor of box­ing Reynold Cox said Paul, like Prince, could earn an Olympic spot based on his ac­com­plish­ments over the past four years. The tran­si­tion of some su­per heavy­weight box­ers to pro­fes­sion­al fight­ers is al­so ex­pect­ed to im­prove Paul's rank in his cat­e­go­ry.

Paul is cur­rent­ly ranked fifth in the Amer­i­c­as which puts him in line for qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Cox said it is un­cer­tain of how many box­ers from the Amer­i­c­as re­gion will be cho­sen but since Paul has done pret­ty well at the tour­na­ments he has been to for the last four years, he is al­most cer­tain to qual­i­fy for the Olympics.

In 2017, Paul was a bronze medal­list at the Pan Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onships in Hon­duras and a year lat­er he won a bronze medal at the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games (CAC) in Colom­bia.

In 2019, Paul qual­i­fied for the Pan Am Games and lat­er he par­tic­i­pat­ed at the World Cham­pi­onships in Rus­sia where he fin­ished in the quar­ter-fi­nal round.

Should Paul qual­i­fy, it would be his sec­ond time at the Olympics af­ter qual­i­fy­ing at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Ac­cord­ing to Cox, in­jured box­er Michael Alexan­der who is ranked third in the wel­ter­weight di­vi­sion would al­so have been a cer­tain qual­i­fi­er for T&T had he not got­ten in­to that ac­ci­dent. Alexan­der's mo­tor­cy­cle col­lid­ed with an on­com­ing ve­hi­cle in the Diego Mar­tin area in Feb­ru­ary.

Cox told Guardian Me­dia Sports that their fo­cus is on pro­duc­ing the best-ever per­for­mance for T&T at an Olympics.

"And I be­lieve our box­ers have the tal­ent and abil­i­ty to do well in Tokyo," Cox said.

The T&T team is set to wing out to a live-in camp in Rus­sia soon, where the fo­cus will be on strength­en­ing their per­for­mances. The camp is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in mid-June, and from there, the box­ers will go straight to the Olympic Games.

Cox called on the coun­try to ral­ly around the box­ers and not pull them down, say­ing a good per­for­mance at the Games is de­pen­dent on the sup­port by all.