BOXING WBA SUPER BANTAMWEIGHT TITLE: AT THE opening chords of their national anthem, Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym and two of his aides were momentarily reinvented as the Three Thai Tenors. Throwing their heads back as they placed their hands (or, in one case, glove) over their hearts, they lifted their voices in song from the opposite corner, and at the conclusion of the stately air pumped their fists skyward in unison and shouted something in their native language.
Our onsite interpreter reliably informs us it was, “Top that, High Kings!”
Barely 10 minutes later, the newest World Boxing Association champion was on his hands and knees, crawling around the canvas as he tried to slither through the platoon of doctors, trainers and EMTs hovering over Bernard Dunne’s prostrate form in an attempt to check on the Irishman’s condition.
After a frightening few moments, Dunne waved away the oxygen mask and it became clear the principal damage had been to his pride.
After two rounds of boxing Dunne had been no worse than level, but what was unfolding in the ring even then was hardly encouraging, and may well have presaged the shattering developments about to unfold.
We are not privy to the details of Dunne’s plan for the Poonsawat tussle, but one must assume he and trainer Harry Hawkins did not spend the past two months up in Belfast formulating a strategy that involved back-pedalling for 12 rounds. But under the pressure of Poonsawat’s relentless, two-fisted attack, Dunne found himself fighting in reverse gear from the opening bell.
Dunne is an adept counterpuncher, and while he got in his licks over those first two rounds, most of what he landed was delivered as he backed away. Occasionally he did stop and stand his ground, but he never, not once in eight minutes and 57 seconds, did anything to make the Thai take a backward step of his own. As a result, he never was able to command the respect that might have discouraged Poonsawat’s inexorable march – or at least slowed it down.
Under those conditions the fight could have ended only one of two ways. Though superbly conditioned, it seems inconceivable Poonsawat could have sustained that high-energy for 12 rounds. Had he eventually run out of gas, the momentum might have swung in Dunne’s favour, but that seemed a slender thread on which to pin one’s hopes.
The other possibility was the one which materialised – that Poonsawat would keep walking through Dunne’s meagre defences until he nailed him.
Their respective fighting styles made it almost inevitable they would clash heads, and they did on several occasions, but none of the inadvertent butts damaged Dunne. By the time the end came, the Dubliner was bleeding from his left ear and from a nasty cut around his eyebrow, but both of those wounds came from Poonsawat punches. And while it was a succession of lefts that put Dunne down the first time, one of them, a left hook that caught him flush, did most of the damage.
Although Dunne got up from that one and resumed boxing, from there on he was a dead man walking.
With a minute-and-a-half to go in the round, Dunne’s legs might not have supported him even if there hadn’t been another little man in the ring throwing punches at him. Even after the second knockdown, Jean-Louis Legland, the French referee, gave Dunne every chance to finish out the stanza before his hometown crowd. But with the three-knockdown rule in effect, there was no alternative to a stoppage when Dunne hit the canvas again with three seconds left, even though that final knockdown was more a matter of Dunne falling down rather than being decked.
There are many who would now counsel retirement. Brian Peters has rehabilitated his most bankable client from a similar experience in the past. Doing so again won’t be easy, but there is the possibility Dunne could explore the European route back to the top should he decide to keep boxing.
The devastating loss does not necessarily mean the end of his marketability. A former champion with a good record who is perceived as highly vulnerable is precisely the opponent everyone is looking for. Should he elect to go that route, Dunne would have a few good paydays left regardless of the result, so there will be big fights awaiting Bernard Dunne if he wants them. They just won’t take place in Ireland. He is no longer in position to call the tune.
If Dunne’s boxing future seems dubious, Matthew Macklin’s could not be brighter. Macklin, who had seemingly rolled the dice when he gave up his British title to face former holder Amin Asikainen in Manchester Friday night, is the new middleweight champion of Europe.
In addition to inheriting a distinguished mantle, Macklin has elevated himself to a position from which he could command a world title shot sooner rather than later.
Macklin spent two minutes tenderising Asikainen’s ribs with right-hand shots, each of which followed a tentative jab. When, with a minute to go in the first round, he showed the jab again, the Finn reflexively shifted to defend against the body shot he thought was coming, leaving the right side of his head wholly unprotected from what had by then materialised as a devastating left hook described by its author as “as sweet a punch as I’ve ever thrown in my life”.
Although Asikainen got up from the knockdown, he seemed dazed and glassy-eyed, and when Macklin chased him into the corner and put him down again, the Sicilian referee stopped the fight at 2:34 of the first.
Macklin, whose Tipperary-born parents had emigrated to Birmingham before he was born, once held the Irish title and entered the ring at the Manchester Velodrome wearing green trunks that matched the jackets of his cornermen, who included Peters.
With his precipitous rise, Macklin would at this point appear to have vaulted past John Duddy and Andy Lee, who have been fairly quiet of late, although Duddy is supposed to fight in New York on October 10th, and Lee will headline a November Peters card in Limerick.
Irish boxing may be in need of a new hero, because wherever else his journey may lead him, Bernard Dunne has probably played to his last full house at the O2.
