Scott Quigg had to climb up from a fourth round knockdown to come back and halt Jamie Arthur thirty five seconds into the eighth round at the Premier Suite of the Reebok stadium.
Quigg started slow and appeared unable to time Arthur early on in what was a quiet opening three rounds for the champion. With a low work rate, Quigg also seemed to struggle to win the middle of the ring, preventing him from gaining any early rhythm.
In the fourth round, Arthur landed a one two mid exchange that put Quigg on the seat of his pants and visibly shaken as the champion took a knee to use the full eight count. Arthur attempted to jump on the champion and dominated the next minute or so of the round before Quigg began to reply with some of his own, having withstood Arthur’s onslaught. By the end of the fourth both guys had began to let the bombs go, bringing a standing ovation from those in attendance.
It was Quigg’s worst moment in the fight that appeared to bring out his best work after the fourth. Quigg, sensing his opponent had used up large amounts of energy, began to stalk Arthur and let more shots go. Arthur appeared to lack the snap in his combinations while on the back foot that had been there for the early rounds. Quigg, sensing this, continued to stalk and hammer away to both body and head of the tiring Welshman.
Round eight brought the end to a hard fought fight. Quigg fired in a right handed body shot that made the bloodied Arthur spinning in pain, thus forcing the referee to stop the contest roughly thirty five seconds into round eight. There were some calls that the stoppage was maybe premature but regardless of that, it was Quigg who had totally taken over the fight at this point and the end was never looking too far away.
The victory maintains Quigg’s perfect unbeaten record, also keeping alive the prospect of a big domestic bust up with either Carl Frampton or Rendell Munroe later on in the year.
On a night where the ten bells rang out in memory of the great Angelo Dundee, Arthur and Quigg provided a terrific fight and one greatly appreciated by the lively crowd in attendance.
Undercard
Rendall Munroe kept open his options of a big fight in the near future. The former world title challenger and former European super bantamweight champion made light work of Jose Saez inside the opening round. Post victory Munroe spoke of world title ambition. Surely a test to the standard of the number two and three in the division is required before another title drive.
Joe Murray was able to maintain his concentration and worked his way towards a clear point’s decision (80-72). Despite appearing to struggle to find his target as efficiently as he might have hoped, Murray put on a dominant and hard working display to dominate all of the rounds.
Young prospect James Dickens comfortably got passed a very negative Barrington Brown to take out an easy 60-54 win. With his opponent opting to cover up and soak up the shots, Dickens showed good composure to stay focused on the job and not get over confident. Brown never appeared to be in too much trouble despite the shots being thrown at him, despite this Brown failed to throw anything like an effective attack at the lively come forward Dickens.
Cruiserweight Matty Askin impressed in his second round stoppage of Attila Palko. Both guys came in to the fight with impressive KO/Win stats but it was Askin who came through stopping his opponent with a right hand uppercut that caused the referee to step in and halt the contest.
Tasif Khan fought his way to a points win over now 147lb fight veteran Delroy Spencer. Khan moves on to a 6-1 (2 draws) while Spencer falls to 14-128 (3 draws).
