Belfast’s Colm Murphy is the new Commonwealth featherweight champion with a stoppage win over Tanzania’s Saleh Kassim at The Mill in Newtownabbey.<\/p>\n
Murphy, who will step up to super-featherweight to face Dublin’s Jono Carroll for the IBO belt on the ‘Jazza’ Dickens-Anthony Cacace undercard on 14 March, came through unscathed in a fight he always seemed on course to win.<\/p>\n
Kassim was pulled out at the end of the sixth round by his corner who informed referee Reece Carter of a hand injury, but in truth this fight was only going one way with Murphy in command.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old becomes the first Commonwealth featherweight champion from Northern Ireland since Billy ‘Spider’ Kelly in the 1950s and improves to 16-0 in the process with attention now turning to his Dublin date with Carroll.<\/p>\n
“He came out swinging, but we watched him and knew he would come forward,” Murphy said after his victory.<\/p>\n
“I made him miss a lot in the first round and could feel him breathe heavy, so I kept by defence tight, worked him to the body and was coming on stronger.<\/p>\n
“I put in a good performance there and have another big challenge ahead of me, moving up in weight for another 12-rounder. I’ve nothing to lose here against a great fighter, so I’m all for it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belfast’s Colm Murphy is the new Commonwealth featherweight champion with a stoppage win over Tanzania’s Saleh Kassim at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-403148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403148","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=403148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}