Lauren Price, the pride of Wales, did what no Welsh woman has done before, taking down Jessica McCaskill in a fight that could generously be described as a hot mess. McCaskill, bless her heart, seemed to think she was at a rodeo, not a boxing match, with wild hooks that made spaghetti look straight and tactics that had all the grace of a bar fight.
The fight, if we’re still calling it that, was mercifully stopped at the beginning of the ninth, thanks to a clash of heads that ballooned McCaskill’s eye up like a prize-winning pumpkin. Honestly, the ringside doctors did her a favor; it saved the crowd from further witnessing what was less a display of boxing prowess and more an exercise in how not to win a fight.
Price, to her credit, kept her composure amidst the chaos, delivering enough smart punches to make a calculator jealous, though the fight was anything but a math problem. The scorecards were all Price, all the time, reading like a broken record: 90-82, 90-82, 90-82.
Switching gears to the lads, Mark Jeffers turned heads with his display of power against Darren Johnstone, planting him on the canvas with a right hand that might as well have come with a “Do Not Disturb” sign. Poor Johnstone spent more time figuring out what day it was than fighting.
Hughie Fury, in another part of the card, delivered a yawn-worthy performance against Patrick Korte. If paint drying had a face, it would be Fury’s fight—effective, sure, but as exciting as watching grass grow. Still, it’s another win in his column, and perhaps it’s enough to bump him up to fights where the opponents do more than just show up to lose.
And let’s not forget Rhys Edwards, the featherweight with more reach than a scandal sheet, outmaneuvering Thomas Patrick Ward in a fight that actually resembled boxing. Edwards showed off some snazzy footwork and punching that had the judges nodding more than a bobblehead.