
Best super-bantamweights on a mega-fight collision course





Carl Frampton is intent on punishing IBF mandatory challenger Chris Avalos for a perceived lack of respect. Avalos arrived in Belfast intent on stoking up the tension with a bit of trash talk. Frampton was not amused by the American’s antics but unsurprised by his crude attempts at engaging in psychological warfare.

100 Help The Homeless and City Centre Gym Belfast are planning to Knock-Out Homelessness tomorrow evening. Pro boxing coach, personal trainer and all-round nice guy Gerard McManus recently kindly offered to train 20 complete novices to fight in a White Collar Boxing event. Gerard has agreed to train all participants as if they were training for an actual fight using his years of knowledge and expertise to get everybody in to the best shape of their lives.

The questions at the post-fight press conference were firing back and forth, thick and fast, as journalists and Team Cyclone collectively came down from the world title-winning high that had finished just minutes earlier. On more than one occasion Barry McGuigan was quizzed on how far his young charge could go. The former world champion has always said that ‘The Jackal’ had the potential to surpass his own ring achievements and then some. This, he said, was the first step on that road. There were strong suggestions that Frampton could go down as the greatest Irish boxer of all time.

The first fight was an intriguing clash of styles. Kiko Martinez swaggered in to Belfast with his European super-bantamweight title but left empty handed after being comprehensively knocked out by Carl Frampton on a cold February evening at the Odyssey Arena. Now they will do it all again, in an impressively constructed outdoor venue on the Titanic Slipways in early September. This time Kiko arrives with a world title and promoter Barry McGuigan reckons that his man will once again strip the Spaniard of his prize asset. The Cyclone Promotions head man is expecting the fight to be even better than the first and a scrap befitting of the fantastic 16,000 capacity venue.