Welterweight Pearson wins bout of the night

MATT JENNINGS still has to wait for his first bout of the season. The heavyweight favourite was fit and raring to go at the top of the bill against a Manchester Select team at the St Pierre Park Hotel on Friday night when he was unfortunately ruled out on a technicality, his medical card showing that he was overdue a check-up.

Jennings will now have to wait until next month's open show at Beau Sejour to resume his highly-promising career and when he does, he will share the limelight with some emerging young Amalgamated Boxing clubmates.

One very much to watch out for is young welterweight Callum Pearson who deservedly won the bout-of-the-night prize for his skilful and thoroughly comprehensive beating of Joey Grimes.

Pearson, boxing at welterweight, is a transformed performer from the nervous youngster who first appeared at the start of last season. He displays a fine array of shots and his use of the upper cut against Grimes was impressive and effective. It was a surprise that Grimes stayed on his feet for three rounds.

Amalgamed BC coach Graham Guilbert was delighted with Pearson. 'He boxed absolutely beautifully. His opponent had had a couple more bouts and I thought Callum might be in trouble tonight. But his range of shots was superb. He's looking good: so, so confident.'

Two other bouts of 11 in total stood out. Young Bradley Watson chalked up another win at 33 kilos, but Luke Brown gave him a lot to worry about and made the Naseem Hamed fan - he even has the frills on his shorts - skip around the ring like he's never skipped.

Watson knew from early on he could not take any liberties and in a high-tempo contest, there seemed little between the two. The Guernsey schoolboy won the vote of all three judges, though.

Alderney's Adam Rose impressed, showing strength, skill and a high level of fitness in beating Lyndon Newman on points.

Rose won all three rounds but much of the last he spent slugging it out, toe to toe, with the smaller Newman.

At the start of the night, local youngster Rene Urga made a losing but promising debut against Alderney's Dave Chadney.

Although the first two rounds featured long spells of inactivity, the two young lads showed a good understanding of the skills of boxing and are certainly ones to watch.

Chadney came into his own in the last and forced Urga into taking a standing count.

Toby Gibbs was another local lad making his ring debut and he lost a split verdict to Gareth 'The Hurricane' Owens.

In truth, Owens was more akin to a wildly-shifting breeze than a hurricane, but he won the verdict in a real rough-and-tumble three rounds.