TWO-WEIGHT CHAMPION FRAMPTON JOINS ELITE
HE calls himself The Jackal but in truth he is the perfect sporting gentleman. Carl Frampton, having become Northern Ireland’s first two-weight world champion with a superb show of intelligent heroism, offered his vanquished foe a shot at redemption without a flicker of hesitation. As Sunday’s dawn rose over the debris of a wild night of Irish celebration in New York, the call for a rematch with Leo Santa Cruz echoed through these concrete canyons. It rose not only from the guttural throat of the boxing community but from a wider public, which is falling back in love with this hardest and most romantic of games. Completed under face-lacerating fire, Frampton’s epic performance of ring intelligence spread word of his legend across the Atlantic, rocketed him into the top 10 of any world pound-for-pound rankings and surpassed the achievements of his idolised mentor Barry McGuigan, who won this same WBA featherweight crown some 30 years ago. These 12 rounds of beautiful brutality amounted to one of the greatest victories ever by a British boxer. Already, this is the night which stands to be beaten as the Fight of the Year. McGuigan expects his son Shane to be voted Trainer of the Year, along with Frampton as Fighter of the Year. Promoter Lou DiBella rightly ordained Frampton as the best of Britain’s 13 current world champions. Frampton’s reddened features blushed as he preferred to talk about the outstanding opponent he had just beaten: ‘Leo had my respect before and he has even more now. ‘He is a great champion and true warrior. It will be my honour to fight him again in Belfast. Not only would that bring a great fight to Northern Ireland but it would give those of my people who couldn’t be here a chance to see what a great warrior Leo Santa Cruz is.’ What Frampton calls ‘the fight which partly defines my career’ has given him prestige in America, assuring him of more great fights and the money which will give him financial security for life. Boxing, too, needed a night like this to spread the gospel of the ring. Frampton said: ‘We decided on an attacking strategy because I am mindful of exciting the public.’ A rematch with Santa Cruz will be as thrilling as the one on Saturday night. Since it will need a football ground in Belfast to accommodate the crowd, we will have to wait until next summer for the pleasure. In the meantime, shortly before Christmas, expect Frampton to meet Lee Selby, the equally dignified holder of the rival IBF featherweight belt. Selby was in the audience in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and was impressed: ‘That was a tremendous fight. We will put on a terrific show, too.’ Santa Cruz had expressed doubts whether Frampton would come to do battle rather than employ his customary counter-punching. They exchanged hammer blows to the head and body at fast speed for the entire 12 rounds. Frampton’s witheringly accurate combinations gave him a flying start for the first four rounds. Santa Cruz, once prevented only by the ropes from crashing on to his posterior from one thunderbolt left, steadied the ship in the middle rounds and made it close in the final third. Not as close as one judge who scored it a 114-114 draw but closer than the 117-111 card of another official, of whom Frampton honestly said: ‘That wasn’t fair to Santa Cruz.’ The majority verdict was sealed by the third judge, at 116-112.