Briton Josh Kelly was forced to dig deep to retain his IBF light-middleweight world title, surviving a spirited late comeback from Belfast’s Caoimhin Agyarko to win a narrow points decision in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Kelly looked in complete control until the complexion of the contest changed when he received a deserved sixth-round point deduction for repeated punches to the back of the head.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old was then bloodied by cuts across his face and a gash on his nose as Agyarko grew in confidence and began to land with increasing success.<\/p>\n
But Kelly stood firm through the championship rounds to secure victory, with the judges scoring the contest 114-113, 115-112 and 115-112.<\/p>\n
“That was a messy and hard fight. I didn’t get cuts from punches like this, it comes from heads and elbows. This is what it looks like when you’ve got tight skin,” Kelly said. <\/p>\n
“I knew he [Agyarko] was go to be tricky and awkward. [He had] a good game plan. He tried to make it a good boxing match. I had to show a different side to me at the end and that is what a champions does.”<\/p>\n
Fighting on the undercard of Anthony Joshua’s heavyweight comeback against Kristian Prenga, Sunderland’s Kelly claimed his 21st professional victory. <\/p>\n
Agyarko, 29, had hoped to become Ireland’s first black world champion. Instead, despite a brave second-half comeback, he suffered the first defeat of his professional career in his 30th contest.<\/p>\n
Also on the card, WBO super-middleweight champion Hamzah Sheeraz laboured to an underwhelming points win over Simon Zachenhuber.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Briton was far from his best and struggled to find his rhythm but was awarded a majority decision as he extended his record to 24 wins and one defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Briton Josh Kelly was forced to dig deep to retain his IBF light-middleweight world title, surviving a spirited…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-568279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}