Box­er Aaron Prince was beat­en 4-1 in his open­ing fight of the AI­BA World Box­ing Cham­pi­onship on Tues­day in Bel­grade, Ser­bia, go­ing down to Hun­gar­i­an So­ma Mester in the mid­dleweight di­vi­sion.

The re­sult means that the coun­try's Olympic fight­er is out of the cham­pi­onships, leav­ing an­oth­er T&T Olympian Nigel Paul and ris­ing tal­ents Don­nell Phillips, Bless­ing Wal­drop and An­tho­ny Joseph, who won his open­ing fight Mon­day by a walkover, to fly the coun­try's flag for the rest of the tour­na­ment.

Prince looked good in the open­ing round against the Hun­gar­i­ans but ap­peared to have been nar­row­ly beat­en in the oth­er two rounds, ac­cord­ing to the five ring judges. Na­tion­al coach Reynold Cox, soon af­ter the fight, said his fight­er need­ed a strong fin­ish in the bout which he failed to do.

" It was a sol­id per­for­mance but I think that in the end, we didn't do enough to swing it around in our favour. You know you need to be a lit­tle more dom­i­nat­ing. It was a bit too close. You know when you're watch­ing your fight­er and you see him be­ing ahead, but I think he could have done a lit­tle more in the last round," Cox said.

He not­ed: " The sec­ond round was a good round for him and that would have evened the fight out. And then in the last round, we got one judge to rule for him which put him back in ar­rears."

Ac­tion con­tin­ues for T&T to­day with a 60kg con­test for Don­nel Phillip up against Tun­ga Oyum­baatar of Mon­go­lia. Phillips is one of three new box­ers on the T&T team who Cox said may be able to spring a sur­prise at the cham­pi­onships.

The oth­er, An­tho­ny Joseph earned a walk-over vic­to­ry over Niv­en Chem­ben of Mau­ri­tius on Sun­day. He too will re­turn to ac­tion to­mor­row (Wednes­day), the same day that T&T's Olympian Paul will be up against Nel­son Hysa of Al­ba­nia.

Mean­while, Wal­drop on Sat­ur­day, will take on Ver­shaun Lee of the USA.