By Srithar Visuasam: On Friday night, Melbourne fight fans were entertained by an eight fight card at the Malvern Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia hosted by Peter Maniatis Promotions. The card hosted three title bouts in front of a capacity crowd.
In the main event, unbeaten Michael Zerafa (8-0, 4 KOs) took on David Galvin (4-5-3, 1 KO) for the vacant WBC Asia Council Continental light middleweight title. The fight lived up to its main event billing with Zerafa entertaining the crowd with his thrilling flurries of quick punches, which always looked likely to stop the ever moving forward Galvin in his tracks.
However, Galvin was relentless in his approach, always posing problems for Zerafa and was able to land flush shots on Zerafa’s chin on numerous occasions and in the middle rounds threatened for an unlikely victory. Galvin was unable to consolidate on his offensive attacks which allowed Zerafa to regroup and continue his control on the bout whenever threatened. The fight went the full 10 scheduled rounds, with the scorecards reading 100-90 x 2 and 99-91 all in favour of Zerafa.
The semi main event saw Stephen Gillingham (6-5) take on Peter Brennan (10-20-4, 2 KOs) for the vacant WBC Asia Council Continental cruiserweight title. The fight was quite a lacklustre affair in terms of action, but quite competitive in terms of a contest which lasted the entire 10 rounds with neither fighter dominating proceedings.
At the end of the 10 rounds, the scores read a 95-95 draw and 97-93 x 2 in favour of Peter Brennan, who captures his second regional title.
The third title bout was for the Victoria State welterweight title, with Ashley McDermott (2-2-5) against the undefeated Oscar Ledlin (5-0, 1 KO) over 8 rounds. This fight was a thrilling encounter with Ledlin dictating proceedings with his height and reach advantage.
However, despite McDermott looking in trouble on several occasions, he showed a great heart and fought aggressively to have Ledlin on the retreat many times. The fight went the full 8 rounds and the scorecards read 80-72, 79-73, 78-74 all in favour of Oscar Ledlin.
Other winners on the night included Terry Tzouramanis, Stevie Kelly, Joel Camilleri and Jake Ellis, with Ben Capps and Robert Heppell fighting out a four round draw.