Great performance from Dai Davies at the Newport Centre tonight (Jamie Sanigar show) in defeating Cefn Fforest's Robbie Turley for the Welsh featherweight championship. Turley showed great heart and courage, but his shots were often too wide as Davies kept himself tucked up and picked him off with sharp jabs and right hands straight down the pipe, eventually leading to a 9th round retirement due to a badly sustained cut eye to Turley. In all fairness though, by that stage it looked like the brave Turley was ready for the taking anyway, and it was only pure guts that kept him swinging. Davies just seemed to know too much and the Merthyr man fought like a boxer far better than his record suggests, having previously only won 5 out of 16. Interestingly though, Davies holds a win over the only other man to have previously beaten Turley in Riaz Durgahed. This was Turley's second defeat in eight fights, and as entertaining a bout that it was, he should have gone away learning and acquiring some invaluable experience from this fight. He can come back. However, there was no doubt this night belonged to Davies and hopefully this victory will raise his confidence to where he can perform like that again. On that form he'll be tough to beat. Well done to both boxers for a superb contest
Yeah it was a good decent card and value for money (though I was there on a freebie thanks to the kindness of Chris Sanigar). I think there were about seven bouts on the bill and most of them were pretty entertaining. I thought Rocky Chakir was very unlucky not to get the decision against Swansea's James Lilley. Felt he consistently landed the better punches. I also felt it was the right decision when Wayne Brooks got the nod over Hari Miles, though if he just threw the left hook a bit more instead of being right hand happy, he could have made it far more convincing (the left hook is an under used punch against southpaws and Miles was exposed to this through-out with his low right hand). I thought Adam Farrell was hard done by too in the scoring in his bout with Bonymaen's James Todd. I wouldn't argue with a Todd victory, but I felt it was harsh scoring by referee Wynford Jones who I think gave him every round. I actually thought Farrell was the better boxer and displayed the better skill at times and maybe deserved a draw, but the difference was he seemed to lack confidence and conviction, where as Todd's aggression and confidence won it for him. If Farrell just had a bit more belief and assertiveness to him, I reckon he could have took it. Would like to see a return between these two in what was a very entertaining match.
