Rio 2016: Nicola Adams guarantees minimum silver medal with women's flyweight semi-final victory

She fights like she likes it, floats like a dancer, smiles as she hits you and on Thursday afternoon she was brilliant beating old rival Ren Cancan in the flyweight semi-final.

Nicola Adams is just four rounds away from becoming a gold medal winner for the second time, a British record that has been in place since 1924, and her extreme composure against China's Cancan was quite extraordinary at this high level. She made a hard task look simple, a very good fighter look ordinary and only the very best can do that.

"I stuck to tactics, just relaxed and did what I had to do," said Adams. "It's the gold now, the end of another four years - I still have to get in there and win and I can't wait." In Saturday's final Adams fights Sarah Ourahmoune from France and she will win if her head is right.

Adams, now 33, is part of the lost group of pioneers from fifteen years ago when women went months and months between fights and were simply not good enough to send to international competitions. It has been a difficult and ignored road for Adams and women like Hartlepool's Amanda Coulson, for a decade the best in Britain.

There is always a tale at the Olympic boxing and controversial decisions dominated with two days of claims, flimsy defences by slick officials and the sacking of various judges. However, on Thursday the emergence of an old Cold War rivalry fell into place when a Cuban and an American won their respective semi-finals. It is the first meeting between the two historic boxing powerhouses since the light-middleweight final in Atlanta in 1996.

Shakur Stevenson is just 19, he agreed terms on Tuesday to fight as a professional with Floyd Mayweather, who has been a yawning guest at the boxing, and he will meet the 2012 champion Robeisy Ramirez from Cuba on Saturday in the bantamweight final. Stevenson won on a walkover when Vladimir Nikitin, the man who received the gift decision over Ireland's Michael Conlan on Tuesday, failed the medical.

Nitikin had a gash above his let eye and a massive cut on the side of his head, which looked like it had been closed by about fifteen stitches as fat as laces and administered by somebody using a pool cue. It will be a special fight, Ramirez is a still only 22 and has been pursued by professional promoters in America desperate to despatch their speedboats from Miami to a remote beach in

Cuba to help him defect. If Ramirez beats Stevenson the pressure will increase.

On Friday Joe Joyce, once a cheerleader in California, starts as the underdog in his super-heavyweight semi-final against Kazak Ivan 'Drago' Dychko, a towering southpaw. Joyce has been compared here in Rio to the George Foreman that bludgeoned everybody when he won the gold medal in 1968. Joyce is fearless and will deliver a real shock. The boxing has been packed with blood, guts, controversy and there are still three days to go.