Like he showed tonight, Brunker was no match for Hearn’s fighter Warrington. In a recent fight in which Brunker was badly beaten by one of Hearn’s fighters, he was stomped by Lee Selby last October in losing by a 9th round stoppage. All three judges scored the fight 120-108.
Aside from the headline fight, that pits the fanatically supported featherweight Josh Warrington against Aussie, Joel Brunker, Matchroom’s Leeds show on Saturday is turning out to be an absolute shocker, with the news today that Liverpool cruiserweight hopeful Tony Bellew (24-2-1, 15ko), will face Latvian journeyman Arturs Kulikauskis (16-26-5, 8ko), a man who has lost 4 of his last 6, and 7 fights in the last 12 months!!! – yes, you did read that correctly.
It is an extremely poor return to form for Eddie Hearn and the heavily criticised domestic mis-match shows of earlier this year, that, in Leeds especially, are reliant only on massive ticket seller Warrington, and his army of football fans, to make the events – often beset with last minute changes – worthwhile.
On a night when the spotlight was firmly fixed on the youngest of the Smith siblings, Callum confirmed once more how special a talent he really is, with a 12 round unanimous decision over the teak tough Frenchman Christophe Rebrasse.
Topping a big hometown show for the first time, Smith’s performance belied his relative inexperience and lack of real championship level fights – he was just 16 bouts into his career – to comprehensively defeat a seasoned operator in Rebrasse, dropping the Frenchman heavy along the way and testing that renowned durability to its limits.
He hasn’t been in the ring since avenging his 2011 loss to Nathan Cleverly in their snooze-fest of a fight last November, yet this Friday Liverpool’s Tony Bellew (23-2-1, 14 ko) once again boxes in front of his hometown fans when he fights aging Czech cruiserweight Lubos Suda (33-9-1, 25 ko) at the Echo Arena, live on Sky Sports.
Ahead of the fight, Bellew – who has recently returned from filming the new Rocky spin-off ‘Creed’ – has insisted he cannot wait to get back between the ropes and under the bright lights, telling the channel that he has sorely missed punching people in the face.
Anthony Joshua KO1 Michael Sprott (10 x 3 mins British Heavyweight title eliminator)
When Anthony Joshua arrived in the ring at 11pm he did so with menace sporting a Tyson like get-up of solid black and like the erstwhile baddest man on the planet, the 2012 Olympian wasn’t in the mood to hang around.
It’s often the case that rematches just fail to deliver on their promise of a repeat of what had gone before. Tonight the Liverpool Echo Arena bore witness to one such occasion, when Nathan Cleverly and Tony Bellew met for the second time to settle their long-standing bitter feud, in the full view of the PPV cameras.
The talk, the hype, the bravado, it all stops today for Nathan Cleverly and Tony Bellew as the time to set the record straight finally arrives. The magnitude of the occasion will have dawned on the fighters the moment they opened their eyes; failure is not an option at this stage of either career. And, if the weigh-in is anything to go by no stone has been left unturned, both men looked great tipping the scales at 14st 3lbs, ready to deliver as they did 3 and half years ago.
We return to the same venue, but this time under Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom banner, who has once more delivered one of deepest undercards in recent British boxing memory in support of one of the most eagerly anticipated fights of the year.
Here we will take a look at the mouthwatering list assembled that has boxing fans licking their lips.
Add in a bunch profanities and this is the kind of talk currently being aimed at Eddie Hearn. The man in charge of Matchroom Sports, responsible for giving over a dozen British fighters world title shots and organising one of the biggest boxing bouts of all time in just the last four years, is under a hail of criticism. As Roy Keane probably once said, sports fans are fickle bastards.
Delusional, that’s a word you’ll have heard regularly within the world of boxing in the modern era and one you will hear more and more as we approach a series of grudge matches that has lit a fire beneath British boxing that is likely to see the levels of bluster reach fever pitch. It’s a word that has always interested me, simply because despite its negative connotations it is such a crucial weapon in the armory of a professional fighter.
The manifestations of such behavior is of course dictated by an individuals personality, but believe me, to a man, every boxer, journeyman aside, have convinced themselves completely that they have the beating of their opponent. To me, the only difference between these assertions being considered delusion rather than belief is the manner in which you choose to state it. In an era when self-promotion is as important to a fighters earning potential as skill, delusion has become somewhat of an art form and three of its chief exponents will benefit in the coming weeks.