By Lewis Croft: Leaning on the ropes is one thing but doing what Tom Dallas did is another. With both fighters coming back from a loss it was there chance to return with a band and a purpose. For Matt Skelton, a former British, Commonwealth, European champion and a world title challenger after a torrid last 2 years at the age of 45 looked to reignite himself on the British
heavyweight scene.
For his opponent Tom Dallas it was about reestablishing himself after stepping in late notice to take on big hitting scouser David Price last time out and suffering a heavy knockout. Straight from the start Skelton looked to set the pace of the fight taking the fight to Dallas who surprisingly looked very limp throwing the jab and defensively looked extremely poor. Dallas was repeatedly tagged with the leaping shots by Skelton and at one point Skelton threw a shot whilst looking at the floor only for it to detonate on the face of Dallas I was surprised Skelton would dominate the early rounds like he did and it became apparent that Dallas had no desire to be in the ring any longer and was looking heavy legged with fatigue manifesting itself within the mind-set of Dallas.
In an almost farcical ending the 6ft 6 Dallas with no fight left in him slumped against the ropes much to the delight of Skelton who continued to land heavy shots on his wounded opponent. The more punches thrown the more Dallas leant backward onto the ropes. It got to the stage in which the legs of Dallas were off the ground and hanging over the ropes almost falling to the outside. Meanwhile Skelton was landing punches to the defensive Dallas forcing him further over the ropes. The referee eventually stopped the bizarre incident during round 5, leaving the future of Tom Dallas hanging in the balance.
Where does Tom Dallas go from here and what could be next for the experienced 45 year old Matt Skelton maybe another tilt at domestic gold?
Headlining the bill was Jamie McDonnell’s defence of his European Championship against former European Flyweight champion Ivan Pozo. As expected it was a routine win for the Doncaster man stopping his challenger within 2 rounds. Landing several shots to the head, McDonnell dropped to the body and landing a beautiful timed left that caused the Spanish challenger to take a
knee in a delayed reaction to the shot. Taking his gum shield out and complaining to the referee in pain, the challenger failed to beat the count. McDonnell can look forward to bigger and better things.