Nathan Brough’s battling display earns city plaudits

Dec 3 2007 by David Randles, Liverpool Daily Post

NATHAN Brough stole the show with a stunning stoppage win at the Liverpool Olympia.

Much of the pre-show talk was of city favourite Stephen Burke’s rematch with Billy ‘Gypsy’ Smith. But as the Anfield lightweight boxed well within himself throughout a generous 60-55 victory, Brough was the name on everybody’s lips afterwards.

In his first professional fight in the city, the light-welterweight prospect had the home crowd wishing for more as he dispatched Coventry journeyman Baz Carey inside three of the scheduled six rounds for his third win in three outings.

Brough’s previous two contests were in Scotland, a common tale of the city’s up-and-coming fighters who are being forced on the road due to a lack of shows in Liverpool.

However, with the new Liverpool Echo Arena and Convention Centre at King’s Dock due to open its doors for a highly-anticipated bill that could see Derry Mathews defend his WBU featherweight crown, and Paul Smith challenging for the English middleweight title in February, the matchmakers will miss a trick if they don’t include Brough on the undercard.

The 23-year-old is going to sell tickets and showed why. With Carey constantly in his face, Brough demonstrated an armoury of skills that defied his relative inexperience.

After taking much of the first round to work the Midlands man out, Brough found his range before the bell. Working patiently off his jab, he unloaded two vicious uppercuts as a sign of things to come.

A big assault midway through the second saw Brough connect with a solid double left before a left-right combination had Carey touching down only to be saved by the bell.

As Carey continued to charge in, Brough did what he had threatened throughout when he caught the shorter man with a right uppercut on one minute 58 secondss of the third round. This time there was no bell to save Carey.

That was one of five stoppages on the nine bout card, down from 11 when Stockbridge Village light-middleweight Sean Farmer’s opponent, Paul Royston, pulled out on Friday night and St Helens super-bantamweight Gary Davies sensibly refused to go in with James Ancliff who rolled off the scales 8lbs over the scheduled weight.

Croxteth featherweight John Donnelly proved another crowd-pleaser as he made light work of Birkenhead’s Dave Keoghan, halting the Wirral man on two minutes 27 seconds of the first round.

John Watson also caught the eye as he shifted through the gears to register a fourth round TKO over Wales-based Nigerian Adi Adewole.

Former army pals Brett Flournoy and Carl Dilks halted their opponents in the second and first rounds respectively. Former ABA champion Flournoy moved to 7-0 by beating Cambridge welterweight Louis Byrnes, with Dilks stopping Derbyshire’s Bryan Wood at super-middleweight to extend his unbeaten tally to five.

Also at super-middle, Mick Jenno overcame Gary Cooper 40-37 and Mike Stafford made a winning return to the city with a 39-35 victory over Ghana’s Prince George Akrong at cruiserweight.