Britain’s Leigh Wood 25-2 (15) scored a boilover against China’s Xu Can 18-3 (3) to claim the WBA ‘regular’ featherweight title with a 12th round knockout at Matchroom Fight Camp in Brentwood, Essex in the United Kingdom on Saturday night.
The normally busy Can, who famous threw a CompuBox featherweight record of 1,562 punches in his last fight against Manny Robles III in November 2019, was strangely subdued for much of the fight while Wood picked his shots smartly and landed the harder blows.
Wood switched stances during the later stages of the bout and seemed to confuse Can when he fought southpaw. The reigning titleholder pressed the action but seemed to fade late in the fight.
A right hook from Wood deposited the fatigued Can on the canvas in the final round of the fight. Can beat the count but the challenger jumped on him immediately, forcing the stoppage by referee Marcus McDonnell at the 2:43 mark.
“He was very tough, I’ve never hit someone so clean so often,” Wood said. “It was about staying disciplined. I had to dig deep.
“I only had six weeks’ notice for that fight but I live the life of a professional fighter.”
Trainer Ben Davison played down his role in Wood’s success.
“The fighters are the ones who go in there and do it. We just help them unlock the toolbox,” Davison said.
Promoter Eddie Hearn said he didn’t think Can deserved more than three rounds.
“It’s life-changing, that was an incredible performance,” the Matchroom Boxing boss said. “Leigh Wood has done it the hard way, he had fights on small halls, he took fights for money when he shouldn’t have done. This is a brilliant story for British boxing.”
The Can-Wood bout was elevated to main event status for Eddie Hearn’s House Party Season 2, Episode 1 after Conor Benn was forced to withdraw following his positive test to Covid-19 on the week of the fight.
On the undercard super middleweight Jack ‘Little Lever’s Meat Cleaver’ Cullen 20-2-1 (9) outpointed former world title challenger Avni Yildirim 21-4 (12) over 10 frames. All three judges had Cullen winning with scores of 100-90, 98-92 and 97-93.
Chris Billam-Smith 13-1 (10) successfully defended the British and Commonwealth cruiserweight titles and added the European belt to his collection with a razor-thin split decision victory over Tommy McCarthy 18-3 (9). The scores were 115-114 and 116-112 for Billam-Smith and 115-114 for McCarthy.
“It’s been a hard camp with some serious rounds but it’s worth it,” Billam-Smith said. “I was better throughout and he was gassing early on.”
In other action lightweight Campbell Hatton 3-0 0 outpointed Jakub Laskowski 4-5-1 (2) over four rounds. Score was 40-36.
Junior middleweight Anthony Fowler 15-1 (12) knocked out late substitute Rico Mueller 28-4-1 (19) in the eighth round.
Fowler is now lined up to face former world champion Liam ‘Beefy’ Smith 29-3-1 (16) at the Echo Arena in Liverpool on October 9.
