Lisa O'Rourke produces performance of her life to win her World Boxing Championships semi-final

Lisa O'Rourke has produced the performance of her life to win her World Boxing Championships semi-final in Serbia on Friday evening, leaving herself just three rounds away from possibly becoming a world champion once more.

Her older sister Aoife cruised through to her final earlier in the day, but Lisa was forced to call on all her powers of recovery and resilience to guarantee herself at least a silver medal on a split decision.

Trailing after the first round after all five judges gave the verdict to number 2 seed Natalya Bogdanova from Kazakhstan, a cracking right hand at the end of an attritional second round swayed three of the judges to give the round to the Castlerea boxer, meaning that she had to convince those three judges in the third round that she was the better boxer.

And that she did after a Titanic brawl where both boxers left every last ounce of energy inside the ring.

Although O'Rourke was the more aggressive boxer, she found it hard to pin down Bogdavona who was more intent on spoiling the contest.

But O'Rourke's powers of recovery were off the charts as she dug deep to cement her place in Sunday's gold medal bout against Elena Gapeshina from Russia.

Her sister Aoife will also have to contend with Russian opposition in the final after Anastasiia Shamonova defeated Li Qian from China in the other semi-final of the 75kg division.