Leamington’s Lewis Williams on the secret ingredient that can strengthen his Commonwealth Games push

Leamington’s Lewis Williams is backing the support of the local crowd to fire him to Commonwealth Games boxing gold after securing bronze with a thrilling stoppage.

Williams, 23, is a keen angler but showed no patience with Papua New Guinea’s Arthur Lavalou, blasting him out of the ring at Birmingham’s NEC inside 96 seconds.

Williams will strut his stuff in Saturday’s semi-final against Australian Edgardo Coumi but does not doubt for a second that as the No.1 ranked fighter here, he will get the chance to go for glory.

He joked: “I know the Australian. I’ll be OK, I say that with a smile on my face.

“The home crowd can give me the edge to get gold. It’s a right motivator walking out in front of that crowd with people cheering you on, it’s quality.

“It’s just a right bonus to have people motivating you. It’s putting all the practice from all these tournaments we’ve been shipped out to and putting it on for the home nation.

“I feel very lucky to have the Commonwealths in my home nation as last time it was on the other side of the planet on the Gold Coast.”

Williams got his first finish inside the three-round distance of the Games having progressed from his last 16 clash with a unanimous points victory over Pakistan’s Nazeer Ullah Khan on Saturday.

Aside from giving the crowd down the road from his hometown plenty to cheer with his eye-catching exploits in the ring, Williams said there are functional benefits of getting the job done promptly.

The 6ft 6in brawler explained: “It’s nice to get the work done early. It just keeps you away from the stuff you’ve got to avoid in tournament boxing like cuts and bruises.

“Against a smaller fighter there’s always head collisions for me [to be aware of].”

Saturday could be the spark that ignites Williams’ career as he has the desire to test himself in the professional ranks in the long run after hopefully scooping gold for Team England here and then repeating the trick at the Olympic Games in Paris in two years’ time.

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