Williamson, 34, becomes a two-weight British champion having also won the belt at light-middleweight – and put a torrid run of results behind him after three losses in his past five fights.<\/p>\n
Simpson, meanwhile, fell to his first professional defeat in 19 fights and after being serenaded with “Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire” chants by a raucous crowd for most of the night, quickly jumped on the microphone to quell potential trouble in the audience.<\/p>\n
The Barnsley native sells most of his tickets personally among his fans and paid tribute to them after the loss.<\/p>\n
Simpson was ahead on the judges’ scorecards when he was stopped in the 10th.<\/p>\n
“I thought I was winning most of the rounds. It was always going to be a tough fight with Troy and I got caught with a very good shot,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I want to say thank you to everyone who turned out tonight and is still here now.<\/p>\n
“I have just been put down and everyone is still here, cheering my name. I will not forget that.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a rematch. I will get back to work, come back and correct this. Thank you for sticking with me. I will be back.”<\/p>\n
A rematch could be on the cards in 2026 and Williamson said he welcomed “all comers” in the new year.<\/p>\n
“This one is for my baby boy at home,” Williamson said.<\/p>\n
“He comes up to me every single day and says ‘and the new…’ I don’t even have to tell him.<\/p>\n
“I promised him I was bringing the belts back to him in the hotel tonight and I am absolutely over the moon.”<\/p>\n
Williamson added: “This fight has changed my life. I have always wanted my children to have a better upbringing than I had. <\/p>\n
“I deserve that tonight with a performance of a lifetime. I have changed mine and my kids’ lives for the better.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Williamson, 34, becomes a two-weight British champion having also won the belt at light-middleweight – and put a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-358846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}