NEW YORK – Cletus Seldin may not wow you with his boxing skills, but he doesn’t cheat himself with his effort.

The popular junior welterweight from Shirley, New York, on Long Island, slugged his way to his eighth straight win on Sunday, defeating Yeis Solano by an eight-round majority decision at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.

One judge had it even at 76-76, while the other two had it for Seldin by the tallies of 78-74 and 77-75. The victory was the second straight for Seldin, 29-1 (23 KOs), by majority decision.

A physically strong if plodding fighter, Seldin showed he was willing to pay the price to get on the inside with his opponent, walking into left hand counters and right hooks from the opening round. By the second round, his left eye was already showing swelling, which Solano, 32, of Monteria, Colombia, targeted with right hooks that couldn’t miss. Seldin, six years his opponent’s senior, continued to push forward as if he expected to incur damage to get in close and began to look for opportunities to land his heavy right hands.

Seldin’s offense consisted almost exclusively of short uppercuts and body punches with both hands, but the nonstop pressure began to tell on Solano, whose combinations were replaced by one-punch offerings in the sixth round. Sensing his opponent fading, Seldin turned the pressure up in the eighth, which may have been the difference between a draw and a win.

“I have a lot of respect for my opponent,” Seldin said. “He was super-durable. But I stuck to my game plan and deserved to win.”

Solano dropped to 15-5 (10 KOs) with his fifth straight defeat.

Seldin has been winning outside the ring as well; he announced after the fight that he and his wife, Jessica, are expecting their first child together.

Sean O’Bradaigh, a popular light heavyweight making his pro debut, settled for a draw against Jefferson Almeida, with two judges scoring the fight 38-38, while the third had it 39-37 for O’Bradaigh. 

O’Bradaigh, 22, of New York’s Greenwich Village, made good use of his significant height advantage, catching Almeida with right hands from the outside in the second round. O’Bradaigh switched stances often to land counters, but he found himself backed to the ropes. Almeida, a Brazilian whose pro debut a month earlier ended in a unanimous decision loss in a fight contested 10lbs lighter, continued to press forward, applying pressure that forced O’Bradaigh to work harder than he was comfortable with into the third round. Almeida, who had taken the fight on 24 hours notice, had his strongest round in the fourth, as he pushed O’Bradaigh to the ropes with a left hook to the body counter that opened up right hands upstairs.

“I thought I won the first three,” said O’Bradaigh, who is graduating from New York University in May with a degree in real estate finance. “Going into the fourth, I was a bit tired, maybe because the camp could have been longer. But I just figured if I get through the fourth, I’ll win the fight.

“He was bleeding all over the place.”

O’Bradaigh had a brief amateur career, winning the 165lbs novice New York Ring Masters Championships (formerly the New York Golden Gloves) title, plus a 176lbs open New York Boxing Championships title.

In the show’s opening bout, Donagh Keary won his professional debut, outfighting Geral Alicea-Romero, of Puerto Rico, to win by three scores of 40-36 in a four-round junior featherweight bout. The 20-year-old Keary of Castlewellan, North Ireland, won numerous international titles in Ireland as an amateur.

Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.