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Federer and the Punch

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Once a year, I let tennis into my life.

I’m reluctant to do so. Wimbledon catches my attention for its entire duration but I don’t like the way competitors are feted for their “stamina” and “courage.” Yes, the levels of fitness they obtain are impressive, and yes it can be difficult to play on when losing, but these are well paid elite athletes in pursuit of cash money.

And nobody is punching them in the face while they submit to their cardio exam.

There is a video on YouTube on the legendary Rafael Nadal exalting “the heart of a warrior.” Overlap between tennis and boxing fans seems reasonably rare and I’d suggest that this is why such radical statements as this are allowed to be made; relative to other tennis players, it is very possible that Nadal does indeed have the heart of a warrior, but compare him to, say, Austin Trout and that claim becomes somewhat ridiculous. Compare him to someone like Israel Vazquez and such a claim becomes utterly bizarre.

Additionally, Nadal was meekly eliminated form Wimbledon early last week by a journeyman of such low ranking that it would have made Mike Tyson shudder. Still, the one-hundred and second ranked men’s tennis player, Dustin Brown, showed a lot of guts in picking up that win – but nothing like the heart James “Buster” Douglas displayed in knocking out the once-rampant Iron Mike.

Different sports – different levels of commitment and risk. Different men.

I was interested then in the questions raised by William Skidelsky in his new book about the great Roger Federer (perhaps the greatest tennis player in history) in his new book Federer and Me. Skidelsky freely admits to an obsession born of some seemingly clichéd self-psychoanalysis but the obsession bares fruit. Skidelsky’s insight into his subject is impractical and born of compulsion and so gets to the root of a matter that stirred within me some fistic interest, specifically his description of Federer’s backhand which he lauds as capable of reaching “any part of the court with every conceivable variation of height, spin and power; and he can do this from almost any position.” To a fairweather tennis fan such as myself that just sounds like tennis, but apparently this is not so. Apparently men’s tennis has retreated from the net, where the creative, exciting tennis of yesteryear was played, to the baseline at the rear of the court, where power dominates all. Thudding, booming hits swapped in rallies defined by endurance and hitting ability as much as technique. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Federer hits his backhand one-handed in pursuit of grace and touch, not power.

Angles; variation of height and power – the firm belief that placement can be more important than power. Skidelsky could be writing about a boxer, not a tennis player.

I want to take you back now to June of 1963. The #2 contender to the welterweight title held by Emile Griffith is twenty-two year old Cuban Jose Stable, two years away from the spirited but doomed shot at the title which would ruin him, and in his prime. Matching him at Madison Square Garden, New York, is Philadelphian and former #2 contender Charley Scott. Scott, once a promising prospect himself, now stands on the precipice of journeyman hell. Both men have much to lose.

Bell.

Federer’s technique is a matter of geometry. Rafael Nadal, his nemesis, deals in torque. Federer has spoken of his admiration for Nadal, of his respect for the Spaniard’s concentration, but equally has stressed that he could never play tennis in such a way. For Federer, Nadal’s mission is to make every point the same – Nadal wants to win by force. Federer gives the nod to Nadal’s overwhelming sense of self but admits that he would find such an approach boring. Federer wants variety. He wants surprise.

Scott and Stable meet ring centre. Stable gives ground a little but fights and when he comes dipping back to Scott the two bump heads to shoulder. Stable places his head under Scott’s chin and they both try to make room for punches without going wide in search of the tiny entrance behind one-another’s elbow – it’s a trap, you see. Something that is rarely mentioned when comparing old-school to new in boxing is this propensity of the referee to permit infighting, and as we shall see, more pertinently, for the boxers to do the same. Infighting was so much a part of the sport up to and including the sixties that it was not even remarked upon, generally, in commentary. It was as much a part of the boxing canon as out-fighting; there was literally no difference in how the two were perceived – a fighter need both to succeed.

Now, a fighter can be held to be a technician by the boxing public if he can throw a very good one-two from the outside. In the run up to his fight with Jennings this year, Bryan Graham, writing in The Guardian named Wladimir Klitschko definitive of the “Eastern European technicians”; Steve Bunce, the pre-eminent British boxing journalist, saw Klitschko “heavyweight’s finest technician”; some less pre-eminent members of the press have even begun to talk about “technician” as a style that Klitschko embodies.

Please understand, I am not saying that anyone who labels Klitschko a technician is wrong; I’m not interested in semantics but rather etymology and what it means for boxing. It is now reasonable to call Wladimir a technician but there is a time when you would have been laughed at for doing so. Draping yourself across your opponents back and leaning down when he gets close was no more legitimate in infighting in 1963 than drawing a knife after a knockdown is now.

Federer is described as “pre-modern” by Skidelsky. In boxing we prefer “old-school”. Either way, what it means is belonging to a different time. Just as Federer’s essence belongs to an era before graphite rackets drove big-hitting bomb-builders to the baseline, Stable and Scott belong to an era long before referees separated fighters that went head-to-head. Naturally, this had consequences for their boxing.

For one thing, the sixties were a time when to become a technician one needed more than a booming jab and footwork birthed specifically to control distance. A technician had to fight at all ranges. If a fighter spent an evening’s work trying to bore in he was no more – but also no less – a technician than the man who backed up all night and jab-jab-jabbed. Both were lacking. A technician was a man who had mastered jab-, mid- and close-range. The word had no other meaning.

In 1963, Scott and Stable have entered the third round. They have agreed now that the fight will be settled on the inside, and given that neither man is a knockout hitter, crisp, volume punching will decide the result. Scott has decided to spring Stable’s trap and punch wide to the body, Stable responds by quadrupling the uppercut to the mid-section, an astonishing technical achievement which requires poise, balance, and the co-operation of a referee willing to let the opponent do enough punching inside that such an advantage presents itself; that last point is important: that such an advantage presents itself.

Such an advantage is not presented to the modern day boxer. It’s a rare, rare night when a boxer can be inside long enough in rounds one and two that he can feel-out and deploy a plan for infighting success. Infighting has become an opportunity to out-muscle a fighter for a psychological edge, perhaps land one punch, perhaps two, before the referee breaks. In 1963 a fighter might spend twenty minutes of a thirty minute fight finding room for punches inside, if he boxed to a certain style. Consider, if you will, how much time a fighter will spend on such techniques in the gym if that is liable to be the case. Now, flip that coin. What if all a fighter has to do to avoid infighting is clinch?

It is common to hear people say that the clinch is “killing boxing”. The truth is both more terrible and less dramatic than that: clinching is modern boxing. Clinching, specifically, is the reason that a whole plethora of infighting skills have been eliminated from boxing’s toolbox. It is one of the great ironies of sporting history, I think, that after boxing became a staple of television’s diet, clinching was frowned upon due to it being seen as dull. This cultural shift trickled through to the ring where referees were encouraged to break as many clinches as possible meaning all a fighter short of in-fighting skills needed to do in order to end that action was clinch. This, in turn, led to an erosion of infighting capabilities in modern fighters because all that is needed to negate any close action is a clinch – and this, finally, results in a huge upturn in clinching.

Boxing, the snake that eats itself.

The last two lineal heavyweight champions of the world, the keepers of the flame of the culture of the sport, have resorted almost exclusively to clinching as an infighting defence. I am a huge admirer of both Wladimir Klitschko and Lennox Lewis; I don’t believe they have done anything other than what was absolutely right for them. All any opponent wants to do with Klitschko is come inside and rough him up in search of the KO. The idea that Klitschko should play Russian-roulette with anyone that breaches his jab when the clinch is available to him is absurd and while people are free to dislike him for it, criticising him for it is not reasonable.

Some version of this is what old-timers and classic apologists are trying to tell us when they say that boxers were “more skilled” in those days. Newsflash: they were. But this is not all it seems to be, nor what dismissive modernists presume it to be, nor, finally, what some old-school determinists insist it is. At the opening of the ninth round, Scott and Stable are surprisingly fresh, and although Stable is well ahead, Scott remains game. By the time they meet ring centre in that penultimate round Stable is sure of his own speed advantage, assured in his technical superiority and his eye for distance is in. He comes narrow but reaches all the way around for a right-hand lead to the kidney, and then a left hand gunned for Scott’s jaw that is caught on the gloves, another right to the body followed up by a left uppercut which glances across the dipping Scott’s scalp. Because Scott, too, was seeking out the inside where he has done his best work, and because the referee will allow them both to punch there, these punches were available for Stable; and so he has learned them.

This is not the case for their modern counterparts. The only time real fighting will take place inside is when the fighters decide to allow it. Before Ricky Hatton’s 2007 tilt at Floyd Mayweather his trainer Billy Graham was direct in asking that Hatton be allowed to fight on the inside. I understand why; his man’s whole strategy relied upon being able to get close and throw punches. The simple fact is, however, is that it is not in the referee’s gift to allow fighting on the inside. That gift lay with Mayweather, whose strategy for victory was to hit Hatton on the outside and nullify him inside. This, he did, by holding. Once Mayweather holds the referee is honour bound to separate them.

This fact is obscured by occasions when infighting takes place, as was the case in the first Mike Alvarado-Brandon Rios war. Here, Alvarado allowed Rios inside, and allowed him to work, while waiting to reclaim distance and blast his man, giving the impression that the referee was “allowing them to work inside” in the parlance of American commentary; in fact, Alvarado was allowing Rios to work inside by neglecting to hold. He was punished for this tactical transgression.

The only ready solution to this infighting issue, should one be required, is for the referee to penalise a new generation of fighters who take holding for granted. This will result in physically and technically inferior fighters claiming wins on point deductions and disqualifications, at least in the short term; or will result in the bizarre sight, as in Lewis-Tyson, of a fighter leaning while holding his arms out wide to prove he is not holding. There is nothing harder in sports than enforcing a cultural change through a rule change (see the total inability of football’s governing body to eliminate diving in football [soccer] by penalising it).

Stable hit Scott with combination after combination on the inside in that ninth round at a point in the fight where Scott needed a knockout to win. If Scott elected to hold, Stable would have been allowed to fight out; meanwhile, if Stable had hit while holding, he would be in breach. So Scott fought on, tending to dip to his left, something Stable did too, but every now and again Stable hops out of their formation and in again to his right creating a whole new mess of geometry between the two. Next time you are watching a fight, or better yet sparring, take note, during a rare infighting exchange, of the enormous difference a small step to the left makes for both fighters. When they are head to head they seek the same punches dependent upon handedness, but with that single half step one fighter is looking for the left hook to the body, the other the right uppercut to the head. There are dozens of such variations. Now, perform the same exercise on the outside – both men still seek to jab.

Like Federer, Scott and Stable are seeking to land punches all over the court and for the most part there is no modern equivalent. Initiating a clinch is a legitimate skill in modern boxing, but it is not one that can be compared to the pulse of this whirling dervish of a contest. Scott has to try to get his head on Stable’s left shoulder opening up his right hand to the body when Stable uses his left; he wants to lock down Stable’s left with this tactic. Meanwhile Stable wants to quick-time Scott’s body when he is stepping in and snipes for the head while Scott is trying to find position. Even this singular version of the inside game is enthralling and fuelled by drill upon drill in the gym.

What this does not mean is that Scott and Stable are better fighters under their ruleset than modern fighters are under theirs. What it means is that fighters from the 1960s have, by necessity, a deeper skillset. Wladimir Klitschko is as brilliant at what he does as Jose Stable was at what he did – more brilliant, Klitschko has perfected, even defined a certain style where Stable was only a disciple of his – but he does less. That he can now be named a technician is the single harshest indictment of the shrinking pool of skills necessary to achieve greatness in boxing.

And so at last we return to tennis and the final analogy between this less demanding sport and the commitment that is boxing. Nadal is just as technically correct as Federer – more so, perhaps, given the specifics of the era, produced by graphite rackets – but Federer’s skilful backhander opens up a whole world of new and more varied techniques.

“Roger Federer,” writes Skidelsky, “made tennis beautiful again.” Whether or not it will be beautiful enough to see Federer to yet another Wimbledon title remains to be seen (he had qualified for the second round at the time of writing), but it’s unlikely we will ever see a return to the beauty of boxing as is it appears in the time of Stable and Scott. I don’t say that boxing was better then – fights like Segura-Marquez and Matthysse-Molina render that opinion invalid – but I do say it was deeper, richer.

I reach for it with the same sense of nostalgia with which Skidelsky reaches for Federer, nostalgia for a time I never knew.

Stable beat Scott by a unanimous decision. At the final bell they embraced, and walked the ring, arm in arm.

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R.I.P. IBF founder Bob Lee who was Banished from Boxing by the FBI

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“The image some people have of me is disappointing,” said Bob Lee in a 2006 interview, “but I also feel I had a positive impact on the sport…”

Lee, the founder of the International Boxing Federation who died yesterday (Sunday, March 24) at age 91, spoke those words to Philadelphia Daily News boxing writer Bernard Fernandez who was the first person to interview him when he emerged from a federal prison in 2006. Lee served 22 months on charges that included racketeering, money laundering, and tax evasion.

Born and raised in northern New Jersey and a lifelong resident of the Garden State, Lee, a former police detective, founded the International Boxing Federation (henceforth IBF) in 1983 after a failed bid to win the presidency of the World Boxing Association. At the time, there were only two relevant sanctioning bodies, the WBA, then headquartered in Venezuela, and the WBC, headquartered in Mexico. Both organizations were charged with favoring boxers from Spanish-speaking countries in their ratings at the expense of boxers from the United States.

Bob Lee’s brainchild, whose stated mission was to rectify that injustice, achieved instant credibility when Marvin Hagler and Larry Holmes turned their back on the established organizations. Hagler’s 1983 bout with Wilford Scypion and Holmes’ 1984 match with Bonecrusher Smith were world title fights sanctioned exclusively by the IBF, the last of the three extant organizations to do away with 15-round title fights.

Lee’s world was rocked in November of 1999 when a federal grand jury handed down an indictment that accused him and three IBF officials, including his son Robert W. “Robby” Lee Jr., of taking bribes from promoters and managers in return for higher rankings. The FBI, after a two-year investigation, concluded that $338,000 was paid over a 13-year period by individuals representing 23 boxers.

The government’s key witness was C. Douglas Beavers, the longtime chairman of the IBF ratings committee who wore a wire as a government informant in return for immunity and provided video-tape evidence of a $5000 payout in a seedy Virginia motel room. Promoters Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner both testified that they gave the IBF $100,000 to get the organization’s seal of approval for a match between heavyweight champion George Foreman and Axel Schulz (Arum asserted that he paid the money through a middleman, Stan Hoffman). In return, the IBF gave Schulz a “special exemption” to its rules, allowing the German to bypass Michael Moorer who had a rematch clause that would never be honored. (In a sworn deposition, Big George testified that he had no knowledge of any kickback).

After a long-drawn-out trial that consumed four months including 15 days of jury deliberations, Bob Lee was acquitted on all but six of 32 counts. His son, charged with nine counts, was acquitted on all nine. The jury simply did not trust the veracity of many that testified for the prosecution. (No surprise there; after all, they were boxing people.) But neither did the jury buy into the argument that whatever money Lee received was in the form of gifts and gratuities, a common business practice.

The IBF was run by a court-appointed overseer from January of 2000 until the fall of 2003. Under its current head, Daryl Peoples, who came up from the ranks, assuming the presidency in 2010, the IBF has stayed out of the crosshairs of federal prosecutors.

As part of his sentence, Bob Lee was prohibited from having any further dealings with boxing and that would have included buying a ticket to sit in the cheap seats at a boxing card. This was adding insult to injury as Lee’s passion for boxing ran deep. As a boy working as a caddy at a New Jersey golf course, he had met Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson, two of the proudest moments of his life.

As for his contributions to the sport, Lee had this to say in his post-prison talk with Bernard Fernandez: “We instituted the 168-pound [super middleweight] weight class. We took measures to reduce the incidence of eye injuries in boxing. We changed the weigh-in from the day of the fight to the day before, which prevented fighters from entering the ring so dehydrated that they were putting themselves at risk. All these things, and more, were tremendously beneficial to boxing. I’m very proud of all that we accomplished.”

Bob Lee was a tough old bird. Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1986, he was insulin-dependent for much of his adult life and yet he lived into his nineties. Although his coloration as a shakedown artist is a stain that will never go away, many people will tell you that, on balance, he was a good man whose lapses ought not define him.

That’s not for us to judge. We send our condolences to his loved ones. May he rest in peace.

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Australia’s Nikita Tszyu Stands Poised to Escape the Long Shadow of His Brother

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They held a confab for the boxing media last week at the spacious Las Vegas gym where WBO super welterweight champion Tim Tszyu has been training for his forthcoming match with Sebastian Fundora. Tim was there, of course, as were many of the fighters in the supporting bouts plus Tim’s younger brother Nikita who was inconspicuous in this gathering.

Nikita Tszyu isn’t on Saturday’s card and so was never spotlighted, but it’s likely that most of the media-types there knew nothing about him. Had they been Aussies, he wouldn’t have been able to blend into the scenery as the Sydneysider is already a major sports personality in the Land Down Under. More than that, he is seemingly on pace to become as big a star as his older brother who has been called the face of boxing in Australia.

In his last start, Nikita wrested the Australian 154-pound title from previously undefeated (10-0) Dylan Biggs. Their bout in the Australian harbor city of Newcastle headlined a pay-per-view telecast.

Nikita was down in the first 45 seconds of the contest and was buzzed in the third, but had Biggs in dire straits in the fourth and ended matters in the next frame with a wicked left hook to the liver. Biggs somehow made it to his feet, but the bout was waived off seconds later as Biggs’ corner was throwing in the towel.

It improved Nikita’s record to 8-0 (7 KOs) and burnished the reputation of the Tszyu dynasty. Collectively, the three Tszyu’s – his Hall of Fame father Kostya, his bother Tim and Nikita – are 48-0 in Australian rings.

Outside the squared circle, Nikita Tszyu, who is 26 years old and looks younger, comes across as thoroughly unspoiled. Talking with him, what started as a formal interview quickly became a relaxed chat between two old souls (as Nikita described himself) enjoying each others company. And as prizefighters go, he sure is different. A college grad, Nikita cited gardening, of all things, when we inquired if he had any hobbies.

As amateurs, Nikita had a deeper background and was more decorated than Tim. But in 2017, he turned his back on boxing to pursue a degree in architecture. He was away from boxing for five years before deciding to give the sport another fling.

“I wanted to be the first person in my family to be smart,” he says tongue-in-cheek when asked how he could abandon a sport that was seemingly in his blood. “My mom wanted one of us to get a college degree,” he says, elaborating. “When it wasn’t going to work out for Tim, it fell on my shoulders.”

As is well known, Nikita’s parents divorced (Nikita was then just starting high school) and his dad then returned to his native Russia and started a new family. But the brothers and their father remain on cordial terms – they speak on the phone periodically – and they are close to Kostya’s parents (their paternal grandparents) who live near Nikita in the Sydney area and are currently watching Nikita’s three dogs, a husky, a French Bulldog, and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. “I can’t imagine a life without them,” says Nikita who, unlike his brother, has no special lady living under his roof.

The family tie extends to the brothers’ trainer Igor Goloubev who is married to their aunt (Kostya’s sister). Uncle Igor, a training partner of Kostya Tszyu in the old days, came to Sydney in 1997 with a touring Russian amateur team and, unlike the famous boxer, never left.

During the lull between the two generations of fighting Tszyus, Igor Goloubev founded a construction company that he still owns. While working for an architectural firm (working remotely because of Covid), Nikita was able to work part-time for his uncle which was good hands-on experience for a future architect.

When Goloubev counsels one of the brothers between rounds, the old becomes new again and this blast from the past doesn’t stop there. The brothers are managed by Newcastle NSW businessman Glen Jennings who formerly managed Kostya, widely considered one of the two or three best junior welterweights of all time. (Jennings says that as a boxer Nikita is more like his dad whereas Tim is more of a pressure fighter.)

Glen Jennings Flanked by Tim and Nikita

Glen Jennings flanked by Tim and Nikita

This is Nikita Tszyu’s second trip to Las Vegas. He was here last year when Tim was preparing for a match with Jermell Charlo. When that match fell out, Nikita used the occasion for a little holiday, the highlight of which was a hike through Northern California’s Redwood Forest, home to the world’s tallest trees.

“Your national parks are the coolest things about America,” he says. As for the food? ”Too much fat,” he says, wrinkling his nose, but that’s a moot point as Team Tszyu now travels with its own chef.

Nikita Tszyu will defend his Australian title on April 24th. At this writing, the opponent is uncertain. Three leading candidates fell by the wayside, two because they lost a fight they were supposed to win, ruining their credibility, and another because he got injured. Finding good opponents may prove to be a recurrent hassle in part because Nikita, unlike his brother, is a southpaw.

Coming up the ladder, Tim Tszyu looked forward to fighting at the MGM Grand where his father won his first title (TKO 6 over Jake Rodriguez in 1995) and had one of his most memorable fights, a second-round stoppage of Zab Judah in 2001. The T-Mobile Arena didn’t exist back then, but sits on MGM Grand property, so Saturday’s fight is a dream come true for the older Tszyu brother.

Looking down the road, it’s easy to envision Nikita becoming a headline attraction here too.

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Dalton Smith KOs Jose Zepeda and Sandy Ryan Stops Terri Harper in England

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Dalton Smith KOs Jose Zepeda and Sandy Ryan Stops Terri Harper in England

England showed off its talent in Sheffield.

Super lightweight prospect Dalton Smith advanced into the championship level and Sandy Ryan proved to be not just another world titlist on Saturday.

Dalton Smith (16-0, 12 KOs) faced the venomous punching power of Jose “Chon” Zepeda (37-5, 28 KOs) and eliminated him with a body shot knockout that left the world title challenger gasping for air at Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England.

“I had to be on my game. He (Zepeda) puts people to sleep,” said Smith.

If any questions existed on Smith’s ability to compete at the championship level, the 27-year-old answered emphatically with a clinical and professional-style win.

Smith walked into the prize ring realizing that southpaw slugger Zepeda could end the night with a single punch. He carefully measured the California-based fighter’s movements and punching power before stepping on the gas from the second round on.

“He’s a great fighter,” explained Smith of Zepeda. “That’s what made me train harder.”

During the first several rounds the two hard-hitting punchers were able to score. Zepeda clipped Smith with quick rights and occasional lefts but discovered that the British fighter has a chin. That seemed to allow Smith to open-up slightly more with one-two combinations.

After Smith gained serious momentum in the third and fourth rounds, Zepeda shortened up his stride and looked to put on more pressure. In the fifth round Zepeda moved closer into firing range and ran into a right cross to the belly that took the strength out of his legs. Down went Zepeda for the count at 1:25 of the fifth round.

“I was hitting him with clean shots and it wasn’t doing anything,” said Smith of his head attack.

Apparently, the body shot was the answer.

Sandy Ryan Wins Battle of Champions

WBO welterweight titlist Sandy Ryan won the battle between British champions with a pile-driving stoppage of Terri Harper who, after dropping down a weight division but was unable to be competitive.

Ryan (7-1-1, 3 KOs) walked into enemy territory and quieted the pro-Harper (14-2-2, 6 KOs) crowd with a riveting attack at Sheffield Arena. There was no stopping her on this night.

“I’m just happy,” said Ryan, 30, of Derby England.

After spending months in Las Vegas, Nevada living and training away from her home in England, the tall slender fighter Ryan finally was able to lure a fellow British world champion in the boxing ring.

“I was away from family and friends for so long,” Ryan said.

A close first round between the two female champions saw Ryan open up the second round behind a riveting left jab and body shots that made Harper hesitant and gun shy to counter.

Ryan seemed to sense early that she was in control and opened up with five- and six-punch combinations. And when Harper retaliated, Ryan returned fire again almost daring her rival to engage in a free-for-all.

Harper clinched several times in the third round to stymie Ryan’s constant attack, but it was not enough. The WBO titlist seemed even more eager to win by knockout and opened up with little concern of Harper’s counters.

In the fifth round it was obvious that Ryan was in complete control, the only question was if she could maintain the frenetic pace. Again, she opened up with punishing combinations as Harper looked for a solution. Instead, rights and lefts pummeled the super welterweight titlist until the end of the round.

Harper’s corner decided to end the fight, Referee Marcus McDonnell declared Ryan the winner at the end of the fifth round by technical knockout.

“I felt her fading,” said Ryan.

The win by Ryan sets her up for a rematch against Jessica McCaskill who holds the WBA and WBC welterweight titles. Their first encounter ended in a split draw after 10 rounds last September in Orlando, Florida.

Ryan expressed a desire to face any champion.

“Any big fight. All the big names,” Ryan said.

Other Results

Ishmael Davis (13-0) defeated Troy Williamson (20-3-1) by unanimous decision after 12 rounds for a regional middleweight title.

James Flint (14-1-2) handed Campbell Hatton (14-1) fis first defeat as a pro by unanimous decision after 10 rounds in a super lightweight match.

Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom

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