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The Fifty Greatest Flyweights of All Time: Part One 50-41

The Fifty Greatest Flyweights of All Time: Part One 50-41
Research on the greatest heavyweights of all time was easy. Fire up YouTube or Dailymotion, watch the career-defining fights of a given contender, compare and contrast, order and write-up, delivered.
By lightweight, things were considerably more difficult.
This is to do with a diminishing interest in boxers by size. It is literally the case that available information is reduced coextensively with the poundage of the fighters in question. By the time I was involved with the bantamweights, things had become extremely difficult, unwholesomely greedy of my time and actually rather expensive.
Needless to say, the flyweights have been even more demanding.
The temptation to cut corners was, at times, enormous, but I allowed myself only one of meaning: this list is cognitive only of flyweights who fought from the Jimmy Wilde title reign to the present day. While every one of these projects has had a cut-off, flyweight’s is the most recent, the World War I era. Partly, this is due to the absurd difficulty in researching 1900 contenders of this size but it is in the main due to uncertainty surrounding the poundage. Flyweight was paperweight for a long time and paperweight was never better than partially established globally. Tough on Johnny Coulon, but there it is.
Otherwise, the flyweight list has been put together under the same rules as governed the others. First and foremost, it should be stated the list considers only fights that took place at flyweight or just above. So a 108lb fighter boxing in 2017 is a light-fly but a 108lb fighter boxing in 1925 was a flyweight, because light-fly did not then exist. This is an appraisal of flyweight in the truest sense, as it existed in boxing history.
Most important in conducting these appraisals: who a fighter beat and how he beat them. Secondarily, what was a fighter’s status in his own era? Was he a lineal champion? A belt-holder? Or just a brilliant contender who amassed a wonderful body of work in his forlorn hunt for the title?
Lastly, skillset as it appears on film and head-to-head considerations, the most speculative of criteria, are taken into account.
With that out of the way, here we go, for the last time a divisional top fifty, this one more obscure, unexpected and mysterious than any that has gone before.
The flyweights; this is how I have them:
#50 – Corporal Izzy Schwartz (1921-1932)
Izzy Schwartz lost thirty-two fights. The good news: many of these were above flyweight. The bad news: many of them were not and he was as likely to drop a decision to an unheard-of novice as he was an all-time great monster.
What gets Schwartz over the line despite this litany of losses is two things. First, he took some really, really impressive names in his career; secondly, flyweight rather bizarrely drops off a cliff after #49 leaving me with about twenty good candidates for #50 and no outstanding ones.
But if you’re going to compromise on your gatekeeper to greatness, it might as well be for a fighter who defeated old-time legends like Black Bill and Willie Davies, men you have either heard of or will in the course of this series. Supplementary wins over future bantamweight beast Newsboy Brown and ranked men John McCoy and Ernie Jarvis do him absolutely no harm either.
It’s worth noting, of course, that Bill and Davies both avenged themselves on the Corporal four times over but also that he was a man who never shirked a challenge.
An air of respectability rather than true wonder purveys a career that was carried out between the two world wars and saw him share the ring with a generation of great flyweights. Noteworthy for his speed, he is also a fighter who completely lacked power, scoring a mere handful of knockouts. A powerful Schwartz would have been a wonderful thing.
49 – Little Pancho (1927-1942)
The younger half-brother of the immortal Pancho Villa, Eulogio Villaruel Tingson was bequeathed the catchier moniker “Little Pancho” in a nod to his much more powerful, much more brilliant relation.
But Pancho, for all that he is not the best fighter in his family, was one of the best flyweights of his era. He lost twice to the great Midget Wolgast in 1932 and a decade later was beaten by the deadly bantamweight Manuel Ortiz. In between he drifted to and from flyweight and the poundage that would become superfly, which left a rather confounded shade to his legacy – but Pancho did good work while he flitted to and from.
He also managed to meet and defeat a boxer once in the class of Wolgast, the shadow of the fighter once known as Frankie Genaro. Pressuring, harassing, and finally cutting the old man he forced him to quit after the eighth.
Genaro makes the bedrock of a fine resume, but he was unranked and basically washed up at the time of his defeat. Pancho though, picked off several other good fighters in the course of his prolonged career, including Joe Mendiola (who he bested no fewer than three times), Jackie Jurich (who holds a precious victory over Manuel Ortiz) and the colorfully named Small Montana, also a ranked fighter.
A failed single tilt at a strap underlined his limitations, a ten-round draw with Little Dado in 1940 the closest he came to that glory.
#48 – Brian Viloria (2001-Active)
Brian Viloria (pictured above on left), now a shell of his former self, still trades on the name that once bought a sigh of contentment from your hardcore purist.
Never the lineal flyweight champion, he was nevertheless arguably the best flyweight in the world for a brief period in 2012, before Juan Francisco Estrada sent him back on his heels and Roman Gonzalez finished the job by way of ninth round stoppage.
So never better than the third most impressive flyweight of his era, Viloria nevertheless did enough to creep in to the fifty, preferred to old timers like Sid Smith and Jackie Brown and near-peers like Donnie Nietes and Akira Yaegashi. Based upon his high level of operations in 2011-2012, this is justified.
Julio Cesar Miranda, a storm of pressure and gloves, represented the beginning of Viloria’s summit as he out-manned and out-fought his highly ranked Mexican opponent in a glorious slugfest. 108lb champion and pound-for-pounder Giovani Segura was dispatched that December by fast handed bunches of punches that cut and broke him before he was stopped in eight.
The jewel in the crown of his resume, however, is his 2012 destruction of Hernan Marquez. Marquez, himself a brief contender for this Top Fifty, was the world’s #1 contender when Viloria, one of America’s most underrated pugilists, ushered him from that spot via tenth round technical knockout.
Viloria is easy to hit for an elite flyweight and this cost him against the best but a combination of fast hands, great punch selection and unerring accuracy certainly forms an impressive first line of defence; quick feet spares his often poor spatial awareness; he could hit and he could certainly box.
Unlucky to run into two monsters in Estrada and Gonzalez, another era may have been kinder to him, and seen him earn a higher berth here.
#47 – Juan Francisco Estrada (2008-Active)
Juan Francisco Estrada nips in ahead of Brian Viloria by virtue of the most old-fashioned and perhaps best of reasons: he beat him.
The two met in April of 2013 in what was, for eight rounds, one of the great flyweight contests of this decade. Estrada, beautifully compact, the less expansive of the two despite his being the rangier, was a little spooked by Viloria’s layers early. The more experienced Hawaiian gave ground and countered to dangerous effect, rounding the relatively inexperienced Estrada up with virtual threats and feints. Estrada screwed the nut and by the ninth, having split, on my card, the first eight with his opponent, began to dominate. It was a glorious combination of will and skill, burnished by one of the beautiful left hands of our time; a great jab and a honeyed uppercut that makes me blink every time I see it landed.
Estrada (pictured above on the right) drove Viloria to the very edge and only heart and experience got him to the final bell in a borderline great fight.
Giovani Segura and Milan Milendo were the other major scalps of a truncated flyweight career. Estrada has spent time at both 108 and 115lbs making his flyweight career too short to rank him any higher here but it should be noted that he emerged from his three year stay at flyweight undefeated.
#46 – Gabriel Bernal (1974-1992)
Gabriel Bernal, a southpaw out of Guerrero, is one of the least heralded Mexican champions and in many ways it is not difficult to see why. Bernal was something of a soft-touch as a championship opponent, having lost eight fights before getting his shot at Koji Kobayashi in 1984. He made only a single successful defense before running into the punching machine Sot Chitalada. His final paper record of 43-14-3 perhaps does not lend itself to the hero worship reserved for Mexico’s more admired kings.
Bernal did do two things so worthy of note, however, that his inclusion here cannot be seen as controversial. First, in 1981, he scraped past the immortal Miguel Canto over ten rounds to go 1-1 in a two fight series with the living legend. The truth is, I can’t tell you whether or not Canto inhabits the number one spot at this time, because I don’t know, but if he isn’t #1 he will be close. True, Canto had faded from the shining brilliance of his prime, but he was still a ranked fighter in the early 1980s and one that had only been defeated by two men, both champions, since 1970.
Secondly, when he did get that shot at Kobayashi and the title, he knocked the champion out in just two rounds. Nobody had done that to the Japanese since the wonderful Jiro Watanabe turned the trick in Kobayashi’s ninth fight. Bernal’s free-swinging, full-hearted attack prostrated him quite literally face-first into the canvas for the first knockdown before depositing him neatly into the prayer position for the stoppage. It was one of the most stunning knockouts of the eighties.
#45 – Dado Marino (1941-1952)
Dado Marino was another wonderful but flawed fighter out of Hawaii; he retired thirty years before Brian Viloria was born. He ruled as the flyweight champion of the world between 1950 and 1952.
An inconsistent and frequent visitor at bantamweight, when he showed the discipline to make the 112lb limit he morphed into a different animal, one that was impossible to stop and difficult even to dent, one who threw a confused and frothy tide of punches inside and out, as direct and aggressive a fighter who has appeared at the weight.
Nevertheless, he requires that juicy three calendar-year title reign in order to make the fifty. His legacy rests heavily upon two wins over Terry Allen, the Brit he wrenched the championship from in 1950 with some vicious right-handed punching in the middle rounds.
Apart from his two impressive defeats of Allen, his resume is underwhelming, a dubious disqualification win over Rinty Monaghan probably his next best. The loss of his title to Yoshio Shirai followed by a failed attempt to reclaim it mirrored his own conquest of Allen and sent Marino into retirement.
There will be more of Yoshio Shirai in coming weeks.
#44 – Sid Smith (1907-1919)
Sid Smith is most famous, if he is famous at all, for being one of Jimmy Wilde’s many victims, but that is a little unfair. Smith was a centurion of pioneer boxing, taking part in more than a hundred contests and winning eighty-five of them.
Wilde crushed him three times between 1914 and 1916, but that aside, Smith’s results against the best of his era was more than respectable. First among them are his 1913 victory over French idol Eugene Criqui, who he defeated by twenty round decision in Paris in April, and his victory, less than forty days later, over Englishman Joe Symonds, who he defeated over fifteen in his hometown of Plymouth. Smith, a Londoner, reached his beautiful peak with these two fights.
“Since the Americans have not yet seen fit to recognise [a flyweight champion],” wrote Boxing of Smith’s fight victory over Criqui, “Smith now has every right to the…championship of the world.”
Wilde would have plenty to say about that, of course, but Smith scored wins over the cream of European competition, and as intimated by Boxing, Europe was then the world as far as flyweights were concerned.
Smith deserves wider recognition than as a footnote to the career of Jimmy Wilde.
#43 – Joe Symonds (1910-1924)
Joe Symonds, as detailed above, was beaten by Sid Smith, but avenged himself eighteen months later; no rubber match was made and so the head-to-head question remains unanswered.
Neither did Symonds have more meaningful success against Jimmy Wilde, the bane of a talented batch of European flyweights, although he did make the fifteen-round distance with Jimmy, something Smith never did manage.
Symonds struggled with the brutal Percy Jones, losing a series to him on the eve of World War I, but Smith never met with Jones, making any comparison impossible.
What sets Symonds apart is his 1915 victory over Tancy Lee.
Lee was the best of Wilde’s flyweight foes, but Symonds got him out of there in the first of their two contests, staged in 1915. 5’1”, Symonds was nevertheless physical enough to find himself boxing at featherweight before his career was over and it was above 120lbs that most of his 29 recorded losses were suffered, so it perhaps shouldn’t be surprising that once he got Lee on the hook he didn’t let him off. Pressure and volume brought him a priceless stoppage win over a man who had scored a stoppage against Jimmy Wilde nine months earlier.
Lee scored his revenge, but not at the flyweight limit.
It is a win that buys Symonds several spots on this list, and more importantly separates him from his old enemy Smith.
#42 – Lorenzo Parra (1999-Active)
One of the saddest sights the ring brought us in 2018 was that of Lorenzo Parra, gut spilling over his trunks, a twenty-year professional campaign behind him, seeking desperately for the spark of timing that made him memorable in the 1990s. He buckled in three rounds for a 0-0 prospect named Arsen Garibian.
Parra’s career above 112lbs has been a bad joke. When he departed the flyweight division in 2005 his record was 28-0. His record now reads 32-18-2. He hasn’t so much tarnished his legacy as filled it with gunpowder and set it on fire.
Between 1999 and 2005, however, this was a man to be reckoned with.
Venezuelan by birth, Parra stayed home until he was 21-0, fattening his record on soft opposition, but when he landed in Puerto Rico in December of 2003, he made his mark. Eric Morel, then 33-0, himself a contender for this list, was favored to turn back the young pretender despite his burgeoning reputation as a puncher.
Parra did land a knock-down quality punch, in the third round, but through the tenth it was his boxing that marked him. Fleet and fast-handed, he out-skilled, out-moved and in the final two rounds when his engine betrayed him, out-gutted his bigger and more experienced foe.
It was a consummate strap-winning performance that marked him one of the best in the world. It was also his high-water mark. A desperately close call followed with contender Takefumi Sakata; a rematch produced an equally close result. Parra and Sakata aside, a domination of Olympian Brahim Asloum is probably his best result, another unbeaten scalp belonging to a highly ranked fighter.
After that, flyweight lost him and Parra lost the essence of what made him great. A genuinely special fighter for a two-year spell, he is neither the first nor the last to be found out by a higher weight class.
#41 – Luis Ibarra (1975-1990)
Luis Ibarra was a rather strange and beautiful fighter, styling elements of the Panamanian but very much as a part of his own idiom. At first, his approach seems insensible; tall for a flyweight he adopted a relatively deep stance, narrowed himself over his front leg and presented his jab. He then neglected to throw his jab despite a slick moving style and instead preferred power punches to body and head, leaving himself at risk despite all that innate mobility, to the attentions of his opponent’s hook, especially to the body. His own hook was a strange punch, thrown long and short, all the while using the same fist to stir and feint and paw and prod with what surely should have been a stiff jab.
But whatever the detail, Ibarra came together in the ring as a strange and frightening proposition for some excellent fighters. Lacking power, he nevertheless threw with absolute commitment leading to a split pair with feared puncher and future world champion Prudencio Cardona when both were still serving their respective apprenticeships. Clearly, his eventual victory over Cardona seemed something of a graduation for Ibarra, for later that same year, 1979, he took to the ring with the superb Betulio Gonzalez (more of whom in part three) and over fifteen sizzling rounds he dominated the little Venezuelan and lifted an alphabet strap in the process. It was a masterful performance.
It was inevitable a fighter of his type would be found out but when the limited Tae-Shik Kim obliterated him in just two rounds in his very next defense, it was seen as something of a shock. Ibarra, too, believed there was more, and he proved it when he battled back to edge out a fighter even more special than Gonzalez when he sprang another surprise, this time over the Argentine legend Santos Laciar in Argentina. It made him a strapholder for a second time, and although the true title evaded him, Gonzalez and Laciar are two wins special enough to hang a strong top fifty ranking upon.
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Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser: Callum Walsh Returns to Madison Square Garden

On Sunday, March 16 (the night before St. Patrick’s Day), Callum Walsh continued his move up the junior-middleweight ranks with a brutal first-round knockout of Dean Sutherland at the Hulu Theatre at Madison Square Garden. The seven-bout card promoted by Tom Loeffler featured seven Irish boxers. Walsh stole the show but two non-Irish fighters on the undercard caught the eye.
In the third fight of the evening, Cletus Seldin (known as “The Hebrew Hammer) took on Yeis Gabriel Solano. The last time Seldin fought at Madison Square Garden (March 15, 2024), he took the ring announcer’s microphone after a majority-decision win, dropped to one knee, held out a diamond engagement ring, and asked one Jessica Ostrowski to marry him. The future Mrs. Seldin (who was clad in black leather) said yes, and the happy couple paraded around the ring together. They were married on September 7.
“So I’ve got a ring now,” Seldin says. “And I love married life because I love Jessica.”
A cynic at ringside on Sunday night wondered if Jessica might serve Cletus with a summons and complaint for divorce in the ring after the fight. Not to worry. The couple seems happily married and, after Seldin eked out a majority decision over Solano (now winless in five fights dating back to 2019), Cletus and Jessica announced in the ring that they’re expecting the birth of their first child.
In the next fight of the evening, Irish heavyweight Thomas Carty (255 pounds) brought a 10-0 (9 KOs) record into the ring to face 409-pound Dajuan Calloway (10-3, 9 KOs, 1 KO by).
Carty-Calloway was a poor match for a prospect. A fighter gets relatively little credit for beating a 400-pound opponent. And the problems posed by a physical confrontation with a 400-pound mountain are considerable.
With fifty seconds left in round two, Carty collapsed to the canvas as Calloway spun him around on the inside. Thomas rose, limping badly on a clearly-injured left knee. And referee Jamil Antoine foolishly allowed the bout to continue.
Carty tried to circle away, fell again. And Antoine – more foolishly – instructed the fighters to fight on. There was a third fall that the referee ruled a knockdown. The bell rang. And then the fight was stopped. It goes in the record book as a knockout at 3:00 of the second round.
Worse for Carty, he now appears to be facing surgery followed by a long rehabilitation. There’s no way to know how much further damage was done to his knee in the forty seconds that he was clearly impaired and under assault by a 409-pound man who was trying to knock him unconscious.
But the night belonged to 23-year-old Callum Walsh.
Walsh is from Cork, Ireland, trains in California with Freddie Roach, and came into the ring with a 12-0 (10 KOs) record.
“He’s a pretty good fighter,” Roach says. “He’s getting better. And he works his ass off in the gym.”
Equally important in an age when social media and hype often supersede a fighter’s accomplishments in the ring as the key to marketability. Walsh has the enthusiastic backing of Dana White.
Callum seems more at ease with the media now than when he fought at Madison Square Garden a year ago. And he has a new look. His hair is shorter and no longer dyed blond.
“It’s a new year, so time for a new look,” Walsh explained. Later, he added, “I don’t want to be a prospect anymore. I want to be a contender. I expected the road to be tough. I’ve never had anything easy in my life. I’ve worked as a fisherman. I’ve worked on a cargo ship. I like this job a lot more. They have big plans for me. But I still have to do my job.”
Sutherland, age 26, was born in Scotland and has lived there his entire life. He came to New York with a 19-1 (7 KOs, 1 KO by) record and, prior to fighting Walsh, noted, “I’m under no illusions. Fighting an Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day in New York; it’s all being built up for him. If it goes to the scorecards, no matter how the fight goes, I’m unlikely to get the decision. But when the bell rings, it will be only me and Callum. I’ve watched his fights. I’ve studied his habits and rhythm. I’ve been through hard fights. He’s untested. This is my big opportunity. I’m not here to be part of Callum’s record.”
Talking is easier than fighting. When the hour of reckoning came, Walsh was faster, stronger, better-skilled, and hit harder than Sutherland. Indeed, Callum was so dominant in the early going that round one had the look of a 10-8 round without a knockdown. Then Sutherland was flattened by a right hook at the 2:45 mark and any thoughts as to scoring became irrelevant.
It was Walsh’s best showing to date, although it’s hard to know the degree to which Sutheralnd’s deficiencies contributed to that showing. What’s clear is that Callum is evolving as a fighter. And he’s the kind of fighter who fits nicely with the concept that Turki Alalshikh and Dana White have voiced for a new boxing promotional company. Whether they’ll be willing to put Walsh in tough is an open issue. UFC puts its fighters in tough.
****
There was a void at ringside on Sunday night. After more than four decades on the job, George Ward is no longer with the New York State Athletic Commission.
Ward was the model of what a commission inspector should be. I watched him in the corner and in dressing rooms countless times over the years. A handful of inspectors were as good as he was. Nobody was better. Later, as a deputy commissioner, he performed the thankless back-of-the-house administrative duties on fight night while other deputy commissioners were enjoying the scene at ringside.
George and Robert Orlando (who, like George, is a former New York City corrections officer) also normally presided over pre-fight weigh-ins. That’s worth mentioning here because it ties to one of the more unfortunate incidents that occurred during the tenure of former NYSAC executive director Kim Sumbler.
On November 1, 2019, Kelvin Gastelum weighed in for a UFC 244 match against Darren Till to be contested at Madison Square Garden. The contract weight for the fight was 186 pounds. It was known throughout the MMA community that Gastelum had been having trouble making weight. Before stepping on the scale, he stripped down completely naked and a towel was lifted in front of him to shield his genitals from public view. Then, to everyone’s surprise, his weight was announced as 184 pounds (two pounds under the contract weight).
How did Gastelum make weight? Video of the weigh-in showed him resting his elbow on his coach as he stood on the scale.
Why am I mentioning this now?
Ward and Orlando know all the tricks. While they were readying for the Gastelum-Till weigh-in, Sumbler told them that they were being replaced on the scales by two other commission employees who had been brought to New York City from upstate. They asked why and were told, “Because I said so.”
George Ward was one of the behind-the-scenes people who make boxing work. He’ll be missed.
****
Six years ago, Gene Pantalone wrote a traditional biography of former world lightweight champion Lew Jenkins. Now he has written – shall we say – a creative biography of lightweight great Freddie Welsh.
Welsh was born in Wales in 1886 but spent most of his ring career in the United States. He captured the lightweight crown by decision over Willie Ritchie in 1914 and relinquished it to Benny Leonard three years later. BocRec.com credits him with a 74-5-7 (34 KOs) ring record in bouts that are verified and were officially scored. If “newspaper decisions” are added to the mix, the numbers rise to 121 wins, 29 losses, and 17 draws. Many of the losses came when Welsh was long past his prime. He’s on the short list of boxing’s greatest fighters. The only knock out he suffered was when he lost the title to Leonard.
Chasing The Great Gatsby is styled as a biography of Welsh and also an advocacy brief in support of the proposition that Welsh was the inspiration and model for the title character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel The Great Gatsby. I’m unsure how factually accurate Pantalone’s work is in some places. Also, too often, he uses big words when small ones will suffice. For example:
“He was a pugilistic virtuoso, a pummeling poet with fists of fury and a keen intellect. His duality was evident in every aspect of his being, an amalgamation of the vicious and the benevolent.”
Over the course of 349 pages, that weighs a reader down.
Still, there are some interesting observations and nuggets of information to be mined in Chasing The Great Gatsby. Among my favorites are Pantalone’s description of Jack Dempsey training for his historic 1921 fight against George Carpentier at a “health farm” that Welsh owned in New Jersey; Pantelone’s description of how the stadium that hosted Dempsey-Carpentier was built; and Pantalone’s evaluation of the fight itself, which he calls “a spectacle of titanic proportions,” before adding,” The truth was inescapable. The fight had not lived up to its grandeur, but the event did.”
****
Several of the books that Robert Lipsyte has written during his storied career as a journalist focus on boxing; most notably, Free to Be Muhammad Ali and The Contender (a young adult novel). Lipsyte’s most recent book – Rhino’s Run (published by Harper) – is a young adult novel keyed to high school football, not the sweet science. But the opening sentence bears repeating:
“Punching Josh Kremens didn’t feel as good as I thought it would, and I’d been thinking about it for five years.”
Be honest! Don’t you want to read more?
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and ME is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1
In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Ever-Improving Callum Walsh KOs Dean Sutherland at Madison Square Garden

Irish luck was not involved as Callum Walsh won the battle of hard-hitting southpaws over Dean Sutherland by knockout on Sunday.
One right hook was all it took.
“You’re never going to beat the Irish,” said Walsh.
In a contest between Celtic super welterweights Walsh (13-0, 11 KOs) retained the WBC Continental America’s title against Sutherland (19-2, 7 KOs) in quick fashion at the Madison Square Garden Theater in Manhattan.
Usually fights between southpaws can be confusing to both contestants. But Walsh had expressed a fondness for fighting lefthanders then vividly exhibited the reasons why.
Walsh, 24, a native of Cork, Ireland, now living and training in Los Angeles, quickly demonstrated why he likes fighting lefties with a steady flow of combinations from the opening bell.
He did not hesitate.
Sutherland, 26, had only lost once before and that was more than two years ago. Against Walsh the Scottish fighter was not hesitant to advance forward but was caught with lefts and right hooks.
After two minutes of scattered blows, Sutherland fought back valiantly and when cornered, Walsh tapped two jabs then unleashed a right hook through the Scottish fighter’s gloves that floored the Aberdeen fighter for the count at 2:45 of the first round.
“I’m feeling very good. Dean Sutherland is a very good opponent. I knew he was going to be dangerous. That was my best opponent,” said Walsh.
It was the fourth consecutive knockout win for Walsh who seems to improve with every single combat.
“I’m looking forward to the future. I’m getting stronger and stronger,” said Walsh who is trained by Hall of Fame trainer Freddie Roach. “Anyone that comes to me I will take him out.”
Other Bouts
Super featherweight Feargal McCrory (17-1, 9 KOs) survived a knockdown in the fourth to out-muscle Keenan Carbajal (25-5-1, 17 KOs) and batter down the Arizona fighter in the seventh and again in the eighth with volume punching.
Carbajal was deducted a point early for holding in round two, but regained that point when he floored the Irish southpaw during an exchange in the fourth.
Despite suffering a knockdown, McCrory continued stalking Carbajal and floored him in the seventh and eighth with battering blows. Referee Arthur Mercante Jr. stopped the fight without a count.
A rematch between two Irish super middleweights saw Emmet Brennan (6-0) remain undefeated by unanimous decision over Kevin Cronin (9-3-1).
Cronin started quickly with a pressure style and punches flowing against Brennan who resorted to covering and countering. Though it looked like Cronin was building up a lead with a busier style, the judges preferred Brennan’s judicious counters. No knockdowns were scored as all three judges saw Brennan the winner 98-92 after 10 rounds.
Dajuan Calloway (11-3, 9 KOs) emerged the winner by technical knockout over Thomas Carty (10-1) who was unable to continue after two rounds when his leg tangled and thereafter was unable to stand. Because he could not continue the fight was ruled a technical knockout win for Calloway in the heavyweight match.
Also
Cletus “Hebrew Hammer” Seldin (29-1, 23 Kos) defeated Yeis Solano (15-5) by majority decision after eight rounds in a super lightweight contest.
Donagh Keary (1-0) defeated Geral Alicea-Romero (0-1-1) by decision after four.
Light heavyweights Sean O’Bradaigh (0-0-1) and Jefferson Almeida (0-1-1) fought to a majority draw after four.
Photo credit: JP Yim
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Nick Ball Wears Down and Stops TJ Doheny Before the Home Folks in Liverpool

Fighting in his hometown, Liverpool’s five-foot-two fireplug Nick “The Wrecking” Ball stopped TJ Doheny after 10 progressively more one-sided rounds to retain his WBA belt in the second defense of the featherweight title he won with a hard-earned decision over Raymond Ford in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Referee Michael Alexander, with the assent of Doheny’s corner, waived it off following the bell ending Round 10, much to the chagrin of the brave but mildewed Doheny who burst into tears. But then, Doheny’s right eye was closed shut and he was plainly exhausted. This may be the end of the line for the 38-year-old campaigner from Perth, Australia via Portlaois, Ireland who was 26-5 heading in following his first loss inside the distance which came against pound-for-pound king Naoya Inoue.
There were no knockdowns, but Ball (22-0-1, 13 KOs) was docked a point in round nine for throwing Doheny to the canvas after having previously been warned for this infraction. Earlier, both he and Doheny were warned for an incident that could have ended the bout prematurely. At the end of the first round, Ball extricated himself from a headlock by kicking Doheny in the back of his knee. The challenger’s leg appeared to buckle as he returned to his stool.
Going forward, Ball has many options. The 28-year-old Liverpudlian purportedly relishes a unification fight with WBC belt-holder Stephen Fulton, but the decision ultimately rests with Ball’s promoter Frank Warren.
Other Bouts of Note
In a 12-round bantamweight contest that was close on the scorecards but yet a monotonous affair, Liverpool’s Andrew Cain won a split decision over former WBC flyweight title-holder Charlie Edwards. The scores were 116-112 and 115-114 favoring Cain with judge Steve Gray submitting a disreputable 115-113 tally for Edwards. At stake were a trio of regional titles.
The science of boxing, they say, is about hitting without getting hit. Charlie Edwards is adept at the latter but the hitting part is not in his DNA. He was on his bicycle from the get-go, a style that periodically brought forth a cascade of boos. Cain, who trains in the same gym with Nick Ball, was never able to corner him – Edwards was too elusive – but Cain, to his credit, never lost his composure.
In improving to 14-1 (12), Cain achieved a measure of revenge, in a sense. In his last documented amateur bout, in 2014, Cain was defeated by Charlie’s brother Sunny Edwards, also a former world title-holder at the professional level. Heading in, Charlie Edwards (20-2, 1 NC) was unbeaten in his last 13 which included a comfortable decision over Cristofer Rosales in his flyweight title fight. Charlie relinquished that belt when he could no longer make the weight.
Showboating Cuban lightweight Jadier Herrera, who fought 13 of his first 14 pro fights in his adopted home of Dubai, advanced to 17-0 (15 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of spunky but outclassed Mexican import Jose Macias (21-4-2). The official time was 2:31 of round seven.
An all-Liverpool affair between super flyweights Jack Turner (11-0, 10 KOs) and Ryan Farrag (23-6) was over in a jiff. The match, which went next-to-last in the bout order, ended at the 42-second mark of round two. A barrage of punches climaxed by a left hook sent Farrag down hard and the referee waived it off.
The noted spoiler Ionut Baluta, whose former victims include Andrew Cain, forged another upset with a 10-round split decision over local fan favorite Brad Strand. The judges favored Baluta 98-91 and 96-94, out-voting the Italian judge whose 97-93 tally for Strand was deemed the most accurate by the TV pundits.
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