by James Slater at Ringside – Last night’s show at The Radio Arena in Newcastle featured far more than just Amir Khan and Kevin Mitchell in action. First of all, amateur stars now making progress at pro level, Frankie Gavin, James DeGale and Billy Joe Saunders all won. And also in action were Commonwealth featherweight champ John Simpson and former WBO champs Enzo Maccarinelli and Alex Arthur.
DeGale and Saunders won handily on points over their British opposition – DeGale over 4-rounds against Nathan King, Saunders over six against Lee Noble. While former world amateur champion Gavin had by far the toughest night of the three – being hit and marked up by his French opponent, Samir Termagaoui. His left eye reddened badly, Gavin was hit plenty but he dug deep and won the toughest fight of his pro career so far..
Finally stopping the visiting fighter in the sixth and last round, when the referee jumped in to rescue Termagaoui, Gavin won a hard night’s work. For the tough-chinned and very game Frenchman’s part, he was very angry at the timing of the stoppage, feeling (probably correctly) he could have seen it through to the end.
Big-punching Welshman Maccarinelli returned to winning ways with a bang, as he stopped the normally durable Krisztain Jaksi in the very first round with a huge body shot. Having lost his last two by KO, Enzo will be happy to have gotten the win.
Alex Arthur, though, had a bad night. Losing on points to Nigel Wight in his 140-pound debut, the former champ looked a veritable shadow of his former self.
As for Commonwealth featherweight champ Simpson, he won every round on the way to a 7th round TKO over a badly cut Stephen Bell. The fight, though engrossing, was one-sided from the start.
NOTES FROM RING SIDE
Seen at ringside last night were a chubby Naseem Hamed, who proved extremely popular with the Newcastle crowd, WBA heavyweight champ David Haye, who still had his broken right hand wrapped up (how hard must Valuev’s head be!) and Naz’ friend Ryan Rhodes, still happy after his stoppage win over Jamie Moore.
Cheers of the night, Khan and Mitchell aside, went to the still celebrated former featherweight KO artist. Hamed was swamped with photo and autograph requests, whereas Rhodes and Haye, though still proving instantly recognisable, created much less of a fuss from where I was sitting!