In the co-main event, Lyndon Arthur beat Bradley Rea by split-decision in a terrific all-Manchester battle to capture the European light-heavyweight title.<\/p>\n
The arena fell silent for a deeply poignant tribute before the fight as 10 bells rang in memory of Manchester’s own Ricky Hatton, who died aged 46 in September.<\/p>\n
It was the first major televised fight night in the city since Hatton’s death. As the final chime faded, the silence gave way to a roar of “there’s only one Ricky Hatton”.<\/p>\n
The action inside the ropes matched the emotion. Arthur was floored by a left hook flush on the chin in the second round, rising shakily to his feet on the count of eight.<\/p>\n
But the Manchester United-red shorts of Arthur soon came forward again. Across the ring, Rea – in rival City blue – was marked up early, heavy swelling forming under his eye as the pair traded punishing blows.<\/p>\n
Rea, 27, landed power punches but Arthur, 34, fought fire with fire with stinging uppercuts as the intensity rarely dropped over 12 rounds.<\/p>\n
Arthur edged the decision with judges scorecards of 114-114, 115-113 and 115-112, but both fighters were relentless and full of heart, everything their hero Hatton stood for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the co-main event, Lyndon Arthur beat Bradley Rea by split-decision in a terrific all-Manchester battle to capture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-238661","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}