BOXING/Super bantamweight fight: Speculation that Brian Peters might have bitten off a bit more than Bernard Dunne would be able to chew with his selection of American opponent David Martinez for the Neilstown boxer in Saturday night's main event at the National Stadium was dispelled shortly after the opening bell.

Although Martinez had fashioned a 15-1-1 record fighting (mostly) in his native New Mexico, his speed was plainly no match for Dunne's, and it rapidly became apparent that the undefeated Irishman had a substantial advantage in the reach department as well.

Unable to get to Dunne with his jab from his preferred comfort zone, Martinez was forced to try to rush his way inside, and he paid dearly for it when he did. Not only was Dunne able to tag him virtually at will, but he proved so elusive that Martinez was barely able to lay a glove on him.

While Dunne was piling up a big advantage, winning every round with hard rights to the body and a multiplicity of stiff jabs that had Martinez's right eye blackened and swelling, he was virtually unmarked.

Dunne had matters so firmly in hand in the non-title featherweight bout that he began to taunt Martinez, mocking him by dropping his arms to his sides and daring him to try to hit him (he couldn't), and compounded the felony by jawing at his outclassed opponent.

The latter tactic drew a stern warning from Belfast referee David Irving who, joked Dunne afterwards, "should have minded his own business. It was a private conversation."

The end of the one-sided bout came at 0:57 of the eighth, when Martinez's trainer Sergio Chavez climbed up onto the ring apron and implored referee David Irving to stop it, much to the delight of the sell-out crowd.

Dunne is now 21-0 and, Peters hopes, headed for a European title shot against super-bantamweight champion Michael Hunter this October.

The chief supporting acts saw Jim Rock and Oisín Fagan win vacant Irish championships by stopping their respective English-based opponents, Kevin Phelan and Jeff Thomas.

Rock regained the Irish title by stopping Phelan, a late substitute for originally scheduled foe Lee Murtagh, at the end of the seventh round, while Fagan won the light-welterweight belt with a seventh-round stoppage of his own.

After Murtagh fell out on the eve of the bout in a contractual dispute, Peters had him evicted from his hotel room and summoned Phelan. The Slough boxer arrived boasting of an Irish ancestor, a great-grandfather named Thomas Francis Phelan who had been born in Tipperary, making his credentials somewhat suspect, but Boxing Union of Ireland president Mel Christle provisionally approved the title fight contingent on his providing the necessary documentation.

Phelan fought gamely in the early going, but a right uppercut in the fifth sent blood spattering from his nose and appeared to take the fight right out of him. By the sixth, Rock was hammering Phelan so effortlessly that at the conclusion of the round, referee Seán Russell approached Phelan's corner with the warning that Kevin was taking an awful lot of punches and that he was considering stopping it.

Manager/trainer George Carmen successfully implored the referee for "one more round," and, said Russell, "he was doing all right, but then right before the end of the round he got hit with a good uppercut. I looked over at the corner and your man was giving me the sign to stop it".

The stoppage and the bell ending the seventh occurred virtually simultaneously. Phelan fell to 10-7 with the loss.

Rock, now 27-4, may have set the stage for a lucrative first defence with the win. John Duddy's manager Eddie McLoughlin and Irish Ropes matchmaker Jim Borzell were both in attendance at Saturday night's Stadium show, and have already engaged in preliminary talks with Peters about a Rock-Duddy fight for the Irish title on September 29th at New York's Madison Square Garden Theatre.

Duddy must first get by Freddy Cuevas at the same venue next Saturday, and may engage in yet another tune-up bout in Las Vegas underneath the August 12th Hasim Rahman-Oleg Maskaev heavyweight championship fight.

But, said the 34 year-old Pink Panther, "I'd be delighted to come over there. John Duddy seems to be very much in demand at the moment, and I haven't got too much time left, so it would be a big occasion if it comes off".

Fagan, a full-time Oklahoma schoolteacher, celebrated the start of his summer vacation with a methodical destruction of Thomas, who though Netherlands-born and England-domiciled, does have an Irish mother.

Fagan knocked Thomas down in the fifth round, a delayed reaction to a body shot, and then in the seventh employed what he called "my Ricky Hatton move," a quick one-two followed by a sidestep and a lethal left to the body straight up the middle that, in Fagan's words, "tore the guts right out of him".

Thomas painfully struggled to his feet, but another right from Fagan sent him down again and referee Emil Tiedt stopped the contest at 2:21 of the round without bothering to complete his count.

Phelan is now 9-6-1. Fagan, 16-3, plans to spend the summer at his Portmarnock home before reporting back to resume his duties at Colombus Elementary School for the new autumn term.