BOXING:FOR THE 9,037 spectators who decided Dublin was the weekend venue, not Cardiff, their reward was a savage battle of minds as much as bodies and Bernard Dunne's stoic acceptance of being a pain receiver as much as a pain giver in the O2 Arena.

Early yesterday morning Dunne, who went into the last two rounds of his WBA super bantamweight fight, three points, five points and six points down with the three scoring judges, stepped over a threshold and into a richly deserved life as world champion.

“It’s been an incredible ride to get here,” he said afterwards. “A long road. Ten years amateur and eight years professional. I’m in boxing since I’m five years of age.”

As much as Ireland’s win in Cardiff occasionally fell back to relying on such less defined characteristics as grit and determination,left hooks and right jabs were the weapons that kept Dunne in contention throughout a bloody and exhausting night; the Irish man rose to meet the heroic dimensions the sport occasionally demands.

Twice on the canvas in a fifth round that ended with the title holder, Panama’s 24-year-old former world champion Ricardo Cordoba, pummelling Dunne on the ropes, the Irishman rocking and protecting with his gloves high to his face, over 9,000 heads dropped. Dunne’s, maybe alone, remained high.

This was a different 29-year-old to the fighter who found himself flat on his back with the Spanish puncher Kiko Martinez celebrating over his crushed dreams in August 2007.

Dunne was patient, able, durable and sure of the instructions his trainer, Belfast’s Harry Hawkins, had been selling him for three months. Hoping that the left hooks he had been landing all night, at some considerable cost to Dunne himself, would shake the champion, the breakthrough arrived one second from the end of the 11th round with the third of three lefts forcing the Canadian referee Hubert Earle to jump in.

Dunne by then had been on two knockdowns. One more visit to the canvas and it would have been the Dubliner that referee Earle would have been standing over frantically waving out.

But severely dehydrated and bleeding from two cuts to his eyes, one that required 10 stitches and will keep him out of the ring for some months, Dunne finally brought it home.

“He couldn’t miss him with the left hook. He was shaking him up with punches and we knew Bernard was capable of more,” said Dunne’s manager Brian Peters.

“Cordoba was coming in the first 30 seconds of each round, having a go. He was trying to bluff us because Bernard was hurting him.”

Peters acknowledged his fighter was behind Cordoba going into the final two rounds. “Yes, four or five rounds, I believe,” said the manager. “To be honest we were taking it round by round.”

The fight was in constant ebb and flow, with southpaw Cordoba seeking to persecute the Irishman with right jabs. A street fighter from Santa Marta in the central highlands of Panama, who turned professional three weeks short of his 16th birthday, the title holder was technically fine and fearfully tough.

The exchanges between the two were constant, Dunne’s lightning raids with left hooks and rights hitting their mark, the first breakthrough arriving when Cordoba went down in the third round, the bell probably saving him.

By the fourth round the challenger’s right eye opened after a clash of heads. Another swing. The fifth round might have been Dunne’s end and perhaps when he looks back and sees how his instincts and recovery allowed him survive Cordoba’s best, he may see the round as his making. He was twice on the canvas as Cordoba brimmed with a new found confidence. The Dunne of 18 months ago might not have survived.

But with Hawkins preaching his one-round-at-a-time mantra into his fighter’s ear, Dunne emerged each time with renewed vigour and a clear vision, Cordoba trying to work him over the opening stretch of each round but with Dunne relentlessly competing.

“I jut remember coming back to the corner and Harry sitting me down and saying ‘look that round’s gone. Let’s start a new round. It’s another three minutes, it’s another fight. Win this round’.

“That’s how we planned the whole fight. Harry had tactics picked out against this guy, that he’s going to start early . . . the first 30-40 seconds of the round he was coming out big. But after that we were grinding him, we were wearing him down, putting pressure on. It was just about absorbing his early pressure and then taking advantage. Harry was saying think of the fight as 12 different fights. That’s how we did it.

“Even after I dropped him in the third and went back to the corner, I said ‘look that round’s gone. We’ve won that round, get started in this one’. It helped me focus on each round and not let me get carried away. Focus on winning three minutes and that’s it.”

Dunne’s patience and focus were burning and he was landing but taking too. Exhausted, the two heroically rolled into the fateful 11th round. A Dunne combination and down went Cordoba. A left and down again. Another left, down. Cordoba collapsed at his corner, Isaiah 41:10 stitched to the back of his shorts – “So do not fear for I am with you”. There was a new world champion.

As the defence of the Panama fighter was voluntary, Dunne now assumes the world title and the obligations that go with it. There was no rematch clause in the contract, so he may face a mandatory fight against Thailand’s Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym.

The Thai fighter could be enticed to stand aside but with a contractual promise to then fight the winner of any other fight that Dunne may take.

Bruised, cut, sore, tired and stiff, he flashed a satisfied smile, one of well-being, of knowing, of anticipation, of pain and promise.

“Now,” he said, “It’s where we can go and what we can add to it.”