-Sandiford scores impressive win on debut
LENNOX ‘Too Sharp’ Allen, Elton ‘Coolie Bully’ Dharry and Kurt ‘The Best’ Bess walked away as champions after comfortably humbling their opponents at the Guyana Boxing Board of Control (GBBC) card dubbed RAMPAGE at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall (CASH) last Saturday night.
In the feature bout of the night Allen won unanimously against Kwesi ‘Hitman’ Jones to claim the vacant WBC/CABOFE Super middleweight title while Dharry registered a knockout victory against Dexter ‘The Kid’ Marques to be crowned the bantamweight champion, similar version, of Allen’s title win.
Locally, Bess gained a ten-count over reigning heavyweight champion Mitchell ‘Strong Man’ Rogers to top the weight class while Edmond De Clou claimed a split decision victory over Winston Pompey in another super middleweight bout and Ray Sandiford impressed against Cecil Smith in his debut professional bout.
The night’s main bout saw ‘Too Sharp’ Allen winning all twelve rounds of the match up with accurate power punching and speed to evade Jones’ attacks. For the entirety of the fight Allen was the attacking force while Jones seemed quite contented to only punch when he was engaged.
Jones managed to avoid a few power left hooks thrown by the eventual champion and soon found himself falling victim to it when his fitness slowly began to wither and by the 10th round had lost his footing and was hugging on Allen to stay up.
It was a torment to watch but Jones hung on to make it to the 12th round in the fight where he never had the edge to be on top.
In clash of the 117-pounders, Dharry fought a patient battle against the belligerent Marques to nab the title. It was a heated battle for the first five rounds as Marques kept prancing around the ring to avoid Dharry but won some of the exchanges they had in the middle.
Half way into the bout Marques’ movement began to slow down and he had no choice but to stand and box and that is where he lost. Dharry’s accurate punches came in flurries that Marques could not avoid.
In round seven, what should have been a TKO ended up being counted a knockout since Marques was trapped on the ropes receiving a beating and not responding prior to crashing into the canvas.
The fans also witnessed Rogers being the more active one in the title clash with Bess. Rogers won every round up to the seventh where he suffered a TKO at the mighty punching power of Bess.
The turn of events was unexpected since Bess did not do much punching at all; he, like Jones only punched when the opponent attacked.
Linden’s De Clou split decision victory over Pompey looked a bit questionable even though it was a close encounter, Pompey kept advancing for all six rounds but De Clou kept him at bay for the first three with the jab.
De Clou’s jabbing percentage dropped and that gave way to Pompey’s successful attacks even though De Clou was no stranger to standing and trading shots.
The opening match of the night had Sandiford convincingly defeating Cecil Smith in the four-round encounter. The debutant Sandiford is a hard hitter and he clearly demonstrated it with his accurate body punching which kept Smith on the back foot for the entire match.
