Frampton down and out in Dubai
THE Last Day Of The Jackal came to a sad end in a dingy, echoing, nearempty room in a desert city 3,961 air miles from his Belfast home.
Carl Frampton’s brilliant career petered out in the dust of Dubai, swept into retirement by the sheer size, as well as the battle-hardened brilliance, of a former US marine.
Jamel Herring, a towering five inches taller, not only overshadowed but overpowered the challenger for his world super-featherweight title.
Those five-and-a-half rounds of punishment do not damage Frampton’s claim to eventual election to boxing’s Hall of Fame, as a former super-bantam and featherweight champion.
But this failure to become the first Irish three-division world champion leaves him stranded short of his ambition to be recognised as the greatest pugilist in the annals of Irish boxing.
Once he regained his composure Frampton sportingly acknowledged Herring as ‘the better man’. The American said it had been ‘an honour to share the ring’ with such a champion.
Although a year older at 35 it is the American — with the background of a broken New York boyhood and the tragic loss of one of his seven children — who flies home to bigger nights.
That is no less than he deserves after this performance. It was just about possible to make a case for Frampton winning one round, the fourth in which a cracking left hook sliced open Herring’s right eye.
Prior to that he was out-boxed. In the fifth, he was dropped by an even stiffer left.
It was all over in the sixth as he was floored by more concussive lefts.