While Agyarko was now enjoying much more success than before, there was still a sense he could have upped it a little more as Kelly was doing enough to break even and while both raised their fist in triumph at the final bell, it was Kelly who got the nod.<\/p>\n
“I thought it was close going into the fifth or sixth, could have been one up to him or level,” Agyarko said.<\/p>\n
“In the second half when I started holding my feet and letting my hands go, I think I took over. He had the point taken off as well.<\/p>\n
“No excuses from me, I wasn’t good enough tonight and I lost. Well done to Josh – he’s a great champion, very tricky and awkward. I did think I won but it wasn’t good enough for the judges and I have no complaints.”<\/p>\n
Kelly’s win was his ninth in succession following his sole career reverse in 2021 to David Avanesyan and he had words of encouragement for the Belfast man after what he described a “messy, hard fight”.<\/p>\n
“Don’t take it as a loss, take it as a learn,” said Kelly.<\/p>\n
“That was a huge fight for him, his second 12-round fight and he learned a lot in there. He’ll come back but has to show how much he wants it, bounce back from his loss like I did five or six years ago. That’s the true heart of a champion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Agyarko was now enjoying much more success than before, there was still a sense he could have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-823937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}