Ringside Boxing Report: Timothy Bradley vs. Junior Witter

The boil bursts as Bradley outpoints Witter

Ricky Hatton once famously referred to light welterweight rival Junior “The Hitter” Witter as being like a boil on his backside. Well, this Saturday night at the Trent FM Arena in Nottingham, England, that boil finally burst as tough Californian puncher Timothy Bradley ripped away the Bradford native’s WBC title as well as any hope he had for a possible showdown with the “Hitman”.

34 year old Witter knew that the cameras of American television giant Showtime where on him and a performance in the bracket of the one he put in when stopping former WBA champion Vivian Harris in seven rounds last September, would add credence to his claim of being the world’s best 140 Ib fighter but it wasn’t to be as Bradley, now 22 – 0 (11), won a razor thin split decision.

Judges Omar Minton and Daniel Van de Wiele seeing it 114 – 113 and 115 – 113 for the visitor, while Franco Ciminale had it 115 – 112 to Witter.

The fight started as a cautious affair with Witter switching stances continuously and pawing with jab as he looked for openings. It seemed clear from the outset that the American challenger was intent on standing back and hoping to counter and part way through the round “The Hitter” moved in, missed, and was forced to absorb a quick flurry.

Despite this success for Bradley, Witter came back with a few decent right hands and was busy enough to take the session.

Round two was much of the same with Witter coming forward looking to score with single shots from awkward angles but again Bradley was slick enough to make him miss and then fire back with his own stinging punches.

The next three rounds were scrappy but Witter worked well enough behind his jab to edge the fight in his favour and even rocked the American with a hard left towards the end of the fifth.

However, the fight turned completely on it’s head in the sixth round as a more aggressive Bradley started to find his range and rocked Witter’s head back with several jarring counter shots before a massive overhand right dropped the home fighter in front of his increasingly worried corner.

Witter was up quite quickly but was clearly stunned and, sensing this, Bradley steamed forward trying to close the show but was disappointed when the bell sounded for the end of the round.

Credit must be given to Bradley for managing to floor the Bradford trickster as neither I nor any of other writers seated around me in press row could recall a single time when Witter had been put down.

Still buzzing with confidence from the knockdown, Bradley, aptly nicknamed “Desert Storm”, came flying out of the blocks at the start of the seventh, hoping to take his opponent out with military precision and soon had Witter reeling as he connected with the overhand right again.

Bradley continued to pose a threat in the eighth but it was a scrappy affair with neither man really getting the upper hand. The ninth was similar as again little clean shots were landed but for me Bradley probably nicked it due to a couple of solid left hooks landed to the body.

It had been clear for several rounds that Witter was lacking his usual speed and struggling to move through the gears, but by the tenth he was really beginning to look leaden and Bradley seized the initiative, rocking Witter with a clubbing left.

Bradley seemed like he couldn’t miss everytime he threw his looping right hand in the eleventh and twelfth and, despite some success for Witter, when the final bell sounded it seemed clear that a new champion was about to be coroneted

How judge Franco Ciminale believed that Witter deserved the decision I will never know, but for what’s worth I had it the exact way that Daniel Van de Wiele had it, 115 – 113 to Bradley.

On the evidence of this performance, Witter seems to have lost some of his swiftness and where he, at 34 years of age, can go from here is questionable. One thing we can be almost certain of now is that any hopes of an all British meeting with linear champion Ricky Hatton are dead in the water.

Timothy Bradley, on the other hand, now has a prestigious world title now strapped tightly around his waist and can look forward to some lucrative marquee match ups. Hell, he could even face Hatton and that really would be adding insult to Witter’s injury.

Carl proves to be the Cobra, Rybacki is more of a lamb

The King Cobra is the largest and most venomous of all snakes and it feeds it’s healthy appetite on a diet of other snakes. Carl Froch, like his Cobra moniker, is also a vicious creature who feeds on his own kind, super middleweights in his case, but in his hometown this Saturday it was not another snake he feasted on, it was more of a lamb.

That’s not to take anything away from the hard punching man from Nottingham, it wasn’t his fault that first Denis Inkin and then Alejandro Berrio and Rubin Williams pulled out of a clash with him and instead he was left with an undefeated but untested and largely inactive 37 year old Pole named Albert Rybacki.

If anything, Froch should applauded for keeping his focus and stopping the visitor after a week in which he and promoter Mick Hennessy must have been tearing their hair out with frustration.

Froch, now 23 – 0 (19), started off almost sparkly as his new Union Jack trunks as he landed sizzling one-twos punctuated by digging hooks to the body.

In the following stanzas, it was more of the same as Froch continued to outclass Rybacki with fearsome combinations and nearing the end of the third crunching ring hand appeared to make Rybacki’s legs dip.

The one-sided drubbing ended in the forth when “The Cobra” connected with a solid right hook followed by a sickening left uppercut and referee John Keane was forced to step in an save Rybacki from further punishment.

Froch, who due to Denis Inkin’s withdraw from the event is now the mandatory challenger with the WBC, will hope for a meeting with long time adversary and undisputed super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe but that seems highly unlikely as the Welshman has long stated that his intentions are to have one more fight against a top class American such and then retire.

A couple of names that were mentioned by promoter Mick Hennessy after the fight were Haiti born Canadian Jean Pascal and former middleweight kingpin Jermain Taylor.

Froch is an exciting and solid punching fighter so he stands every chance in the world against any of the 168 pound division’s elite but the opposition here was not of a high enough calibre to prove any of his detractors wrong and he must now look to add some substance to his ledger.

John Murray – Lucky?

If their was an award for luckiest boxer of the night, then Manchester lightweight John Murray would have won it hands down after he came through a tight, contentious, eight rounder with Dewsbury based Syrian Youssef Al Hamidi. Referee Terry O’Connor scoring it by 77 points to 75.

Like promotional stablemate Carl Froch, Murray also found himself in the position of having to sweat on whether he’d be fighting or not after Sheffield youngster John Fewkes pulled out of their clash due to gastroenteritis.

Al Hamidi – who came into this contest on the back of an impressive win over another Manchester prospect, Anthony Crolla – came out swinging from the off and put the first two rounds in the bag with the type of flashy combinations you rarely see from a man with a record of 4 – 8.

Murray, who was far from sharp after nearly six months out of the ring, just edged the third but from what I saw the fourth belonged to Al Hamidi as he used the ring well and finished with a clubbing right.

The fifth was scrappy as Murray looked to push the Syrian back and was swiftly tied up. Heads clashed accidentally towards the end of the rounds and a cut opened up above Murray ’s right ear but he didn’t let it faze him and just managed to steal the session.

By the sixth some of the crowd had picked up on the fact that Murray was having an usually bad night and, sensing an upset could be on the cards, began to chant “Youssef, Youssef”. Both exchanged punches but it appeared to me that Al Hamidi’s work was the more telling.

The seventh was another close one, with Al Hamidi tiring but Murray still unable to stamp his authority on the contest. The 23 year old Mancunian did enough to win the round but by now it seemed that he’d be needing a knockout to win.

Murray upped the work rate in the eighth and final round but still could not shift Al Hamidi, who himself managed to come back and land some shots of his own.

A chorus of boos echoed around the Arena when Terry O’Connor’s decision was announced and that told you all you need to know.

This was a case of a man who has been overrated being outfought by a man who is seriously underrated and while Murray stays unbeaten and can look forward to better opportunities, any thoughts that Murray is a better prospect than Amir Khan, or even John Fewkes for that matter, must be discarded.

Other fights

Another head scratcher was the Midlands Area light-heavyweight title fight between local fighter Tyrone Wright and Sheffield based Paul David. Wright did have David down in the ninth but a score of 97 – 93 seemed perplexing to say the least..

The bout was often messy and David, in typical Ingle trained fashion, fought off the back foot with his hands held low. Wright was the aggressor through out but his come forward style seemed to be reaping him little rewards as David frustrated him with his jab.

I saw Wright winning three rounds, the eighth, ninth and tenth and David sweeping the rest, so how the Nottingham native ended up winning by four points so beyond me.

Bradford ’s Nadeem Siddique scored only his sixth stoppage in a 22 fight career but had to recover from a flash knockdown in the first to do so.

30 year old Siddique came into the ring with his usual confident swagger but soon found himself on the receiving end of a clubbing left hook from African southpaw Alex Brews and was on the canvas.

Siddique, who is nicknamed “Goldenboy”, came firing back in the second and a series of stunning body shots forced Brews to take a new near his corner. At first I though he was just getting his breath back and would be up at eight or nine but Terry O’Connor’s count continued all the way to ten and the man from Ghana saw his professional resume drop to 9 – 4 – 1.

Incidently, Brews was only the second fighter that Siddique has fought who has held a winning record and at his current age it seems like high time the Yorkshireman stepped up a level.

Talented welter Adnan Amar nearly slipped up before the first bell had even rang when he took on the previously defeated Mark Lloyd for the vacant English crown.

Amar looked confident during the ringwalk and in the style of another great Ingle trained pug, Naseem Hamed, decided to flip over the top rope but things the 25 year landed poorly and stumbled before regaining his composure.

It turned out to be the only fault of the night for him as his southpaw jab and whinging left hook proved enough for him to run out a close 97 – 95 winner.

Croydon southpaw John O’Donnell returned to action after twelve months out with a comprehensive 40 – 36 win over Stourport’s Billy Smith.

O’Donnell, who lost in two to Mexico ’s Christian Solano on the De La Hoya – Mayweather undercard in Las Vegas a year ago, set a high pace from the outset and landed strings of flashy combinations by Smith, who had only been stopped five times in 67 losses, proved his durability once again. O’Donnell improves to 16 – 1(5), while Smith drops to 12 – 68 – 1.

The event opened with debut of another promising local talent as Nottingham light-welterweight Nathan McIntosh outpointed Dudley ’s Martin Gordon over four rounds.

McIntosh often had his hands low but he was sharp enough to avoid Gordon’s wild swings and rocked him with short hooks.

After Froch’s win over Rybacki, there were two “Graveyard” fights that had little to inspire the hundred or so people that stayed behind.

Dave Ryan outscored Carl Allen by 40 points to 36 and Tom Glover’s clash with Jack Perry was scored as a draw, 39 points a piece.