JOLLY BOYS OUTING

Early dose of festive fare on Merseyside

WITH Manchester’s hugely popular Jolly

Boys show this year headed for the Victoria Warehouse still a fortnight away, the Liverpool version, a relative newcomer by comparison, went ahead at the Devonshire House Hotel where all three favourites enjoyed victories over the distance, two of them by way of shutout.

A pair of six-rounders shared bill-topping honours on the Steve Wood (VIP Promotions) show, and saw Ellesmere Port’s Matty Fagan and popular Liverpudlian Luke Willis claim the spoils in their respective contests against Derbyshire’s Lee Connelly and Lithuania based Russian Andrej Cepur.

Fagan, with one eye on a February clash in Doncaster against Yorkshire’s Robbie Barrett, and looking to erase memories of a contentious recent points loss at the hands of Joe Murray, secured a 59-56 victory against an opponent who always gives his all. And southpaw Willis took every round against a regular visitor to these shores, one who had gone the distance in all but one of his 16 UK outings this year.

That said, Cepur hasn’t won a single round in any of those earlier outings so one didn’t have to be the smartest punter to work out the most likely outcome of this one.

Ellesmere Port’s Mason Cartwright, having prepared for a 10-rounder at Bowlers in Manchester just a couple of months ago and then needing less than a round to see off Hungary’s Zoltan Turai, was back punching for pay again, this time against a Bulgarian in the shape of Sofia’s Teodor Nikolov. He was able to bank a few rounds, winning all four, to finish the year on a high note and ready himself for new and bigger challenges in the new year.

Fleetwood’s Steve Gray took charge of the Fagan-connelly bout and scored the other two from ringside for Preston trialist Jamie Kirkpatrick.

THE VERDICT Three clear wins for the

favourites.