In an impressive performance, #14 WBA Josh Warrington (19-0, 3 KOs) gave his Italian opponent Davide Dieli (15-4, 5 KOs) a methodical beat down in defeating him by a 4th round TKO tonight to win the vacant EBU featherweight strap at the First Direct Arena, Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Warrington, 23, knocked Dieli down once in the 4thb with a fight hand.
After Dieli got back to his feet, Warrington unloaded on him with a flurry of shots that resulted in Dieli’s corner tossing in the towel to have the fight stopped. The official time of the stoppage was 1:42. Warrington doesn’t usually score knockouts, but he had the right opponent in front of him tonight for him to make that happen.
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An out of shape looking former WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (37-4-1, 11 KOs) beat Alexandre Lepelley (17-2-1, 3 KOs) by an 8 round points decision. Burns was making his debut at light welterweight, and he looked really poor. Burns put Lepelley down in the 1st round with a right-left combination, but from there it was all downhill for Burns.
The weight that he’d gained to move up to 140 appeared to be all fat with most of it centering around his midsection. It’s surprising that he didn’t figure it out during training camp that he wasn’t going to look good in this fight, because he could have trimmed some of the fat off and looked better than he did.
The referee scored the fight 79-71 in favor of Burns.
Lepelley lost a point in the 7th for making contact with Burns with his head. The referee failed to notice that it was Burns that made contact with Lepelley.
After the fight, Burns promoter Eddie Hearn was talking up possible domestic level clashes for Burns against Anthony Crolla, Michael Katsidis and Luke Campbell.
Burns said that he wants to move back down to lightweight because he feels like he could make weight in that class still. It’s too bad Burns didn’t find that out in training camp. He doesn’t have the power or the frame to be fighting in the 140 pound class.
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#10 WBC super middleweight Callum Smith (14-0, 11 KOs) had his way against a badly over-matched Rafael Sosa Pintos (48-11, 19 KOs) in scoring a 3rd round stoppage. Smith put Pintos down three times in the 3rd round. Pintos made it up each time, but the referee chose to stop the fight after the 3rd knockdown.
Smith’s promoter Eddie Hearn said after the match that Smith will be fighting a WBC super middleweight eliminator against Nikola Sjekloca on November 22nd on the undercard of the Tony Bellew vs. Nathan Cleverly 2 fight in Liverpool, UK. If Smith beats Sjekloca, Hearn want’s to have him fight in a final eliminator before challenging for a world title against the WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Dirrell next year.
Other boxing action on the card:
Stephen Simmons pts 6 Courtney Richards
Simon Vallily TD 5 Jiri Svacina
David Brophy KO 1 Vitalie Mirza
Callum Johnson TKO 3 Luke Allon
Reece Cartwright pts Jan Balog
Arfan Iqbal pts 4 Martin Horak
