Home Boxing News Josh Kelly and Troy Williamson both confident of victory on Friday night

Josh Kelly and Troy Williamson both confident of victory on Friday night

Troy Williamson and Josh Kelly

Junior middleweight Josh Kelly 12-1-1 (7) is confident he can keep his two-fight win streak alive when he takes on British champion Troy Williamson 19-0-1 (14) at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle, England on Friday night.

The 28-year-old Kelly is a former Olympian who was on a fast track to a world title shot before a couple of slip up in his career.

In June 2019 Kelly fought Ray Robinson, who was ranked number 13 by the WBC and number 15 by the WBO at welterweight. Kelly was ranked number 9 by the WBA at 147-pounds at the time. The contest was even and ended up in a majority draw, with one scorecard going in favour of Kelly 96-94 while the other two read 95-95 twice.

In his next fight six months later Kelly fought Winston Campos. Kelly was struggling to handle Campos at times, but nonetheless managed to win the bout via unanimous decision by scores of 99-90, 99-90 and 98-91.

In his next fight in February last year, Kelly fought highly ranked welterweight David Avanesyan 29-3-1 (17) who was ranked in the top 10 of all four major sanctioning bodies at the time. European welterweight champion Avanesyan showed to be the better man on the night and finished Kelly within six rounds.

Since then, Kelly has defeated Peter Kramer 12-7-3 (8) by fourth round knockout and scored a 10-round unanimous decision victory over Lucas Brian Ariel Bastida 19-2-1 (11). Both bouts took place this year.

“It’s on. Fight week has started and I’m fired up and ready to go. A little bit of a light session today with non-contact stuff; I’ll save all the contact punching for Friday when I get that British belt,” Kelly said.

“I know what to expect from Troy, he’s a good fighter but he doesn’t present any new problems for me. I’ll be the best opponent he has come up against and he’ll be second guessing what things are going to be like.

“For me, there have been plenty of Troy Williamsons that I have beaten before and that will be the exact same outcome for this fight. And the new…”

The undefeated Williamson, 31, scored a 10th round stoppage of Ted Cheeseman 17-3-1 (10) in October last year to claim the British title and has scored two victories since.

He doesn’t believe Kelly will present him with any real problems.

“His pedigree counts for nothing, you have to remember he was meant to next best thing since sliced bread. People always mention being in the Olympics but it’s irrelevant, he’s been found out before and I’ll expose him on fight night,” Williamson said.

“He’s always been a technical fighter but the questions still hang over him – can he swim when the water starts getting rough? I can turn this into a fight he won’t like and when things get rough I don’t think he’ll know how to respond.

“One of us is going to come out of this as the super welterweight hope for North East boxing. I can tell you now, it’ll be me.”

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