FOUR FOURS
A quartet of four-rounders make up this VIP promotion
A FOUR-TWOS was the bill-topper at the Irlam and Cadishead Leisure Centre. Salford’s Jade “The Blade” Taylor secured a 40-37 victory on the card of the night’s referee, Darren Sarginson. The beaten opponent was Bargoed’s lighter
Lana Cooper who, despite turning in a decent enough showing, was unable to register that elusive first victory. Salford’s Steve Backhouse and Hyde’s
Dale Arrowsmith had met before, just a few miles up the road at Bowlers Exhibition Centre, where Backhouse had picked up his sole inside-the-distance win. It looked for a moment, in the very last knockings of the opener, as if he might replicate that achievement. Backhouse hurt Arrowsmith with a pair of chopping rights and left him holding tightly. Frustrated at being unable to land just one more telling shot, Backhouse half wrestled, half threw his opponent to the canvas.
That, though, was as close as it came to finishing early, with both boxers then enjoying productive spells. Just a point separated the pair at the finish, the score reading 39-38 in Backhouse’s favour.
Not quite as easy on the eye was the clash between Salford first-timer
Kieron Leonard and Islington’s Jordan Grannum who, despite being told by Mr Sarginson late in the third that he needed to see something, still ran out a 39-38 winner. Leonard, with just a handful of white-collar outings to his name, did throw a little more leather in the second half, but his shots carried insufficient pop to worry the busy Londoner, who had his hand raised for only the fourth time. The fight between Norwegian Simen
Nysaether and Swadlincote’s stillwinless Kent Kauppinen finished 39-38, too. Although he proved triumphant, the visitor from Trondheim was stunned momentarily in the last, having been tagged by a right hook.
THE VERDICT Four close-fought contests, one of which results in a rare but deserved win for Grannum.