By Dean Parr
On Thursday, Worthing's Alex Dilmaghani, now 4-0 (1), registered his first stoppage by beating Latvia's Sergey Rozhakmens, 2-25-1 (1 KO) in the fourth round. In the run up to this fight, he told BoxingScene how he intended to 'steal the show'. Alex ended up doing just that, attracting the praise of the likes of Micky Cantwell with his fast hands and slick footwork.
“Yeah, I was satisfied,” Alex remarked. “I've got to look back at the tape to make sure I was doing all my punching correctly, but I was pleased with my performance because I stopped quite a durable guy.”
Indeed, some have argued that the fight should have been stopped earlier. On this, Dilmaghani said: “I was landing clean punches throughout and in the first round I was connecting with many, many hard punches, he was cut and his face was marked up heavily. He was hurt by every punch I threw, and I don't like to see a fighter take too many punches, so I thought it shouldn't have gone past two rounds. However, I guess that's how the referee saw it.”
Going into the bout, Sergey was something of an unknown quantity, but Alex insists he knew enough to create a strategy. “I heard through the grapevine that he was a fighter and a brawler”, revealed the southpaw, “and because I knew this, I just wanted to dictate the pace from the get go, so I stamped my authority from the off, and he went on the back foot from there.
“He tasted my power and didn't want any of it. He was just trying to survive and it didn't work for him. He's a nice guy and best of luck to him in the future.”
After such a dominating performance against someone that natural light welterweight Amir Unsworth could only get a decision out of, Dilmaghani, a lightweight, is keen to get straight back in the ring. “I'll be fighting next on 26th March I believe. Either that, or in Birmingham - it's a toss up between both. I'll fight whoever the Hattons put in front of me, and I'll beat them. I'm a hungry, confident fighter right now, and I'm on a high. I'm on a roll!”
Dilmaghani is evidently ambitious, and has a concrete idea of what he wants for the future. “I want an English Title in 2011,” declared the Ronnie Davies-trained fighter. “And that stands me in good stead, in the way that it's almost like an eliminator for a British title shot after that. Obviously, then we go on to European and world.”
To finish up, a beaming Dilmaghani had this to say to his fans. “I'd like to thank people for their continued support, and all their good luck messages. It gives me more motivation to train hard, and I'm very pleased,” he declared.
