REAL LIFE ROCKY!
Hollywood ending as Bellew wins world title
ANIGHTMARE start and a Hollywood ending. How fitting for Tony Bellew, Liverpool’s master of drama, that he should be dumped on the canvas in the first and then rise as a world champion two brutal and pulsating rounds later.
He climbed on to the ropes and screamed, beating his chest with something similar to the force that left Ilunga Makabu dangling over the side of the ring and unconscious a moment earlier.
For a worrying time the Congolese fighter just lay there, out of it and in some distress from the furious flurry of lefts and rights that turned this fight on its head.
Thankfully, he was brought around and moved to his stool as bedlam engulfed the ring with Bellew a world champion at the third time of asking, winning the vacant WBC cruiserweight belt in the same Goodison Park stadium where he appeared in the most recent Rocky film.
A Hollywood finish it was. But initially it looked like being the same old story because, make no mistake, Bellew was in serious trouble.
He had seemingly started the fight in perfect fashion, setting the pace with jabs and then, with increased confidence, some hooks. He was pawing at Makabu, lining him up and landing to head and body. Did he get complacent? Evidently so.
Makabu had thrown nothing but in a flash unleashed a huge left straight down the middle, hitting Bellew flush and leaving him on his backside with a mangled nose. He got to his feet immediately and the bell went but what a crushing start.
The second was far less dramatic, with Bellew bloodying Makabu’s nose but taking a far more cautious approach and just about shading the session.
On to the brilliant third. Bellew set the pace and again got his opponent to the ropes. Again he unloaded, despite the risk that what happened in the first might happen again. But it didn’t.
He threw three big rights in a furious burst and then, finally, landed the punch that made him a world champion. A huge left he will never forget.
Makabu took a concerning amount of time to come through, but he recovered, a big hitter with 18 knockouts in his last 19 fights who had just lost a furious shootout. Bellew, who lost title tilts to Nathan Cleverly and Adonis Stevenson, was dancing a jig in among the madness. Six months on from his big film moment, he followed an even better script
Bellew said: ‘I am Everton. That’s why I got up. Nothing was going to stop me tonight... King Kong and 25 men couldn’t keep me on the floor tonight.
‘I can’t put it into words. My son’s never been to a fight. I cried in the dressing room because he broke my heart when I looked at his little face — he looks like his mother.
‘I am world champion. That’s what I am. All I do is I believe in my coach and all these people around me. My family. I do it all for them. Nobody’s done that to Ilunga Makabu before. No one. I am the best cruiserweight in the world. This is the only fight in my whole life I’ve gone into and dreamed for three weeks that I lose.
‘The left hand dropped me and it broke my nose immediately. There was nothing keeping me on the floor. When I’m fighting in this Park, I’m the closest thing to unbeatable since Floyd Mayweather.’
On the undercard, Callum Smith continued his preparations for a world-title shot with a sixth-round stoppage of Cesar Hernan Reynoso.
Earlier, David Price returned to the ring after a 10-month absence with a two-round knockout of Vaclav Pejsar.
Price hadn’t fought since he was brutally knocked out in a European heavyweight title fight last July by Erkan Teper, who subsequently failed a drugs test.
Price, whose record now reads 20-3, said: ‘I felt good in there. It didn’t last long but it felt like what we worked on came to fruition.’