Liam Walsh – A Boxer from Sheffield with a Bright Future
By Glenn Desmond
Liam Walsh retained his super-featherweight commonwealth title, as well as his hundred percent record against Joe Murray at the Copperbox Arena in London’s Olympic Park last Saturday evening. The bout was competed on the undercard of the British Middleweight title fight between Billy Joe Saunders and John Ryder.
Walsh, now 15-0, won a majority decision, looking game and scrappy throughout the bout. Although he took considerable damage in the early going, he was able to pick up the pace after the sixth and fight his way to the decision, putting the exclamation mark on his night’s work with strong showings in both the eleventh and twelfth, putting his quality on display, working the body well.
Going in it was known for Walsh that this would be a tough fight with Murray bringing a perfect 14-0 record south with him.
Walsh showed brilliant head movement and footwork late into the fight and liked to throw a double right uppercut, followed by a left hook to the body, which he found repeated success with throughout the fight.
His unrelenting pace looked to have Murray shook in the sixth, and worked at a consistent, progressive pace against Murray in the remaining rounds
The Mancunian Murray, a world amateur medallist and team GB bantamweight representative at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, stayed dogged throughout the fight landing some nice hooks, but for the majority of the fight, Walsh was nowhere to be found cutting angles well and staying out of Murray’s power range.
He made a strong push from the tenth and eleventh, no doubt in his mind that he had been bettered by his opponent in the eyes of the judges, and put on a performance that could have proven difficult for Walsh to endure had he started to work as hard earlier in the fight, but did not possess enough power to deal with Walsh’s speed and combinations. In the end, it was a close but gruelling bout with a 96-95 going the way of Walsh. He also won the vacant International super-featherwight title.
With the fight being such an exciting outing it is no surprise that immediate rumblings were being made about a rematch, and undoubtedly Murray belongs at this level so it is likely that we see these two cross paths in the near future.
Walsh experience in the later rounds, and an extra bit of class was proven to be the decisive factor on the night.
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