The final round was something to behold, both men putting everything on the line to prove they had done enough. <\/p>\n
The first minute of that round belonged to Chamberlain, who put the pressure on Rafferty and threw everything he had into combinations that made it through.<\/p>\n
But, to the home crowd’s delight, Rafferty finished the round strong, replying with shots of his own that exposed Chamberlain’s already opened cuts, with blood pouring down the side of his face. <\/p>\n
As the final bell sounded the arena rose to applaud the efforts of both men who provided what could be one of the fights of the year. <\/p>\n
“What a fight and what a time to be alive,” Rafferty told BBC Sport after the fight.<\/p>\n
“I’ve come from absolutely nothing to now fighting a main event on TV, which is amazing, both our stocks have risen.<\/p>\n
“I thought I did enough and I believe I won but I’m not a referee, I’m a fighter. I’ll go back and assess to see if I need to be better next time. Sign me up for a rematch.”<\/p>\n
Rafferty has never lost as a professional and Chamberlain came into this fight with just one defeat. This was the first time both men had drawn. <\/p>\n
“Since the fight was made I said that I was going to stand there and have a war with Jack,” Chamberlain told BBC Sport. <\/p>\n
“That’s what we both did, it was a proper 12 round British title scrap.<\/p>\n
“We both dug deep and went into deep waters, we’re getting out the ring after the final bell healthy and back to our families, which is what matters.<\/p>\n
“We both caught each other in there a few times. People are telling me it was one hell of a scrap and we both want the rematch, so let’s get it on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final round was something to behold, both men putting everything on the line to prove they had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-90203","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\/90203","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=90203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}