Report and views on McDonnell and Skelton wins.

Taken from http://www.thecornerstool.co.uk

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Written by Danny Hill

Photos by Javed Iqbal (follow on twitter @JIfotos)

Saturday night saw a real mixed bag of results at the Hillsborough Leisure Centre, Sheffield. There were 11 fights on the bill in all, with the headline act been European Bantamweight Title holder Jamie McDonnell (18-2-1) who was taking on spaniard Ivan Pozo (32-6-1).

The 32 year old wasn’t expected to give Doncaster lad McDonnell too much to worry about after some recent bad results, against poor opposition. However, he had come in as a late replacement for Malik Bouziane so often these changes can make things much more interesting. Bouziane had pulled out through injury giving Jamie only around 10 days to prepare for Pozo.

Despite this setback, everything was alright on the night. McDonnell frustrated his opponent in the first round with some classy boxing and used his jab to take control of the fight early doors. It was obvious by the end of the round that McDonnell had too much for Pozo. The second round started off similar to the first with McDonnell again controlling before eventually ending the fight with a fierce body shot. McDonnell pushed Pozo away from him to create a bit of space and then hit him with a series of punches before landing a left hook just below the rib cage of the Spaniard sending him to one knee. Pozo struggled to breathe, was in visible pain and looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. He couldnt get up after 10, bringing the fight to an early conclusion.

McDonnell admitted after the fight that he would like to get some more rounds under his belt before jumping up to world level which is very tough at this division. Any fight above his current ranking is going to be hard, but he proved he has the maturity to do it on saturday night and I agree that to jump in at the deep end would be career suicide at this moment in time. At 25 he doesn’t need to rush into anything but it will certainly be interesting to see who he fights next as he certainly has some exciting times ahead.

The shock of the night came when up and coming heavyweight Tom Dallas (15-1-0) took on and lost to Matt Skelton (25-6-0). Many expected an easy win for Dallas with Skelton been his senior by nearly two decades at 45 years of age. I expected Skelton to be a tough opponent as he has been in with some tough heavyweights and despite his years he hasn’t had the number of fights as many his age. I did expect Dallas to have that extra edge though as the younger man. Also, Skelton had been out of the ring since October 2010 and at his age you would’ve expected ring rust to have set in a bit.

As a former British, Commonwealth and European title holder it certainly seems to have been a bad ‘pick’ for Tom Dallas. After losing his last fight as a late replacement against David Price it would’ve been expected that an easy fight be put together for him to get him back on track. I think that this is what Dallas’ management thought Skelton would be and I fear that their underestimation of Skelton due to his age could have caused irreparable damage to Dallas’ career.

The fight ended in the 5th round when after a period of domination from Skelton, allsorts of problems developed for Dallas. He found himself hanging half out of the ring, almost horizontally, with Skelton pounding blow upon blow into his face before the referee rightly stepped in to end it for him. A lot of young (and old for that matter) fighters have bouts picked for them and maybe this fight will show the consequences of getting this wrong. Dallas will certainly find it hard to become one of the nations feared heavyweights, which was his initial plan.

Other results on the night were as follows:-

- Liam Cameron beat Harry Matthews on points.

- Josh Warrington beart Dan Naylor on points.

- Joe Elfidh beat Joe Hughes on points.

- Paul Edwards beat Stefan Slavchev who retired in the 2nd.

- Danny Price beat John Anthony on points.

- Jamie Sampson beat Arran McKelvie on points.

- Lewis Taylor beat Gilson De Jesus on points.

- Issrar Asif beat Verban Borisov on points.

- Sam Matkin beat Mark McKray on points.

Thanks Cornerstool missed the bill, Skelton fight sounded good, agree on Dallas, this is a big setback and probably a fight that should have been avoided not knowing what Skelton would have left.