A Mixed Bag For Britain’s Future Stars

On a weekend with two prospect shows, it was a chance for some of the country’s future stars to enhance their growing reputations, and it turned out to be a very telling couple of days.

Let’s start at York Hall on Friday night, where Queensberry put on an interesting card headlined by Dennis McCann versus the tough Ionut Baluta.

The night kicked off with points victories for Joel Kodua, Khalid Ali and Umar Khan before Raven Chapman outpointed Lila dos Santos Furtado to retain her WBC International Featherweight title in the first fight on the televised card.

It was then the turn of Ryan ‘The Piranha’ Garner to send out a statement as he blasted away Juan Jesus Antunez inside just three rounds.

It then took the reigning British & Commonwealth featherweight champ Nate Collins just 24 seconds to retain his belts after landing a short right cross which Raza Hamza couldn’t recover from.

With the undercard complete, it was time for the main event which certainly lived up to the levels of intrigue which it had received in the build-up.

It was always going to be a case of the boxer versus the brawler. The slick southpaw that is McCann up against the game Baluta who was coming into the fight off the back of an upset win against Andrew Cain.

Both fighters started quickly. McCann wasn’t looking to get on his bike as much as you’d expect, often sitting in the pocket and trading during the early rounds.

The fight was back and forth but after getting buzzed, McCann started to get back to his usual self and looked to counter Baluta.

The Romanian wasn’t giving him a moment’s rest though, and then in the mid-rounds, a cut opened up on the forehead of McCann after an accidental clash of heads.

With blood now pouring profusely down McCann’s face, the fight started to resemble more of a horror movie than a main event boxing fight at York Hall.

With blood affecting the vision of McCann, the referee waved the fight off and it was down to the scorecards of the judges.

The scorecards read 86-85 McCann and then two 86-86 cards, with the contest therefore declared a technical draw. At first glance, it was a fair result, however it was later revealed that the last round was scored 10-10 by the two judges who had scored it a draw. To the human eye, that was a round clearly dominated by Baluta meaning the Romanian had every right to feel hard done by.

Both fighters confirmed in their post-fight interviews that they’d be down for a rematch so here’s hoping that they get it on once again and next time, maybe it will be on a bit of a bigger card, ensuring the bout receives the merited hype. 

On Saturday night, Olympic gold medallist Galal Yafai fought in Birmingham, his home city, for the first time in in over 10 years.

It was a far livelier undercard than the previous night with Muhammad Ali, Ibrahim Sulaimaan and Aaron Bowen all picking up stoppage victories whilst the Dave Coldwell-trained Sahil Khan impressed on his professional debut against the tough Sean Jackson. 

Kicking off the main card was the highly anticipated rematch between Jordan Flynn and Kane Baker. Both fighters promised to start where they left off after their first fight and, to their credit, that’s exactly what they did. 

After 10 rounds of back-and-forth action, which saw Baker hit the deck once and Flynn deducted a point, the referee scored the contest a draw. 

Will we see a trilogy? Maybe. Do we want to see a trilogy? Most definitely.

Sol Dacres cantered to a comfortable points win over South African Chris Thompson before one of the shocks of the year so far.

The highly rated Cyrus Pattinson faced the game Conah Walker, from Wolverhampton, in what was expected to be another step up for the former GB Podium squad member, albeit one he was expected to come through fairly comfortably.

However, that wasn’t to be the case.

From the first minute, Walker was all over his opponent and in the third round, he made the big breakthrough when dropping Pattinson with a peach of a right hand. 

After having the riot act read to him between rounds, Pattinson started to show off his amateur pedigree in the fourth and boxed really nicely, but Walker was still there and would not leave him alone.

From the early rounds, it was clear Walker was hurting Pattinson with the left hook to the body and it was becoming more and more evident as the fight went on which way it was going.

After another good round for the favourite in the fifth, the contest was turned on its head once again as Pattinson hit the deck for the second time after it looked as though he had slipped.

Another contentious knockdown came in the sixth as Walker seemingly pushed Pattinson over, but it was clear, by this stage, the fight was most definitely Walker’s to lose and at the end of the eighth round, Pattinson’s team called it a day and waved the fight off between rounds. Corner work at its very best.

Pattinson will live to fight another day whilst Walker has most certainly announced himself on the British domestic welterweight scene. Hopefully for him, some big paydays lie ahead after a fantastic performance.

On to the main event and it turned out to be all about levels, as predicted by Galal Yafai in the build-up.

As soon as that first bell went, Yafai was all over Tommy Frank who immediately looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. 

After hitting the deck early on, Frank’s corner team were already on the ring with towel in hand and when Yafai landed another couple of big shots to the head, in came that towel.

What next for the Olympic champ? Well, the carrot of a unification clash with Sunny Edwards is well and truly dangling but if Edwards overcomes Bam Rodriguez, the likelihood is that fight will land in the summer of next year.

No matter what, boxing has a huge talent on its hands in Galal Yafai.