BOURNEMOUTH, England – For the first time in his five-fight career, super middleweight hope Taylor Bevan went beyond two rounds. Here, against Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Zdenko Bule, he was just taken into the third before the bout was stopped after 43 seconds in the round.
The unbeaten Bevan set about his man early, eating up the distance between them and forcing Bule on the back foot.
Bevan whipped in heavy shots to the body in the opening round, and although Bule was doing everything he could to stay in there, he had a mountain to climb.
Bevan – from nearby Southampton, well-supported and promoted by Matchroom but fighting on this Queensberry Promotions bill – started the second in the same fashion, cracking Bule with a right hand after the visitor missed an uppercut.
Bule was taking a hammering along the ropes in the second, and it could have been stopped, but the inevitable ending was delayed into the third.
Bule had earned his money the hard way.
He was down early in the third from a left hand, having taken more abuse. When he stood, the bout was correctly waved off.
Bevan improved to is 5-0 (5 KOs), while Bule dropped to 15-16 (3 KOs).
Junior middleweight prospect Mason Payne was well on top when Romanian visitor Octavian Gratii seemed to turn his ankle while struggling to stay in the fight with the Englishman in Round 4.
Kent’s Payne, 5-0 (2 KOs), had success with his right hand from the start, whether it was thrown as a straight, an uppercut or a hook to the body. The action was similarly one-sided in the second, though Gratii was able to crash home a couple of rights.
Payne asserted his dominance in the third, lancing Gratii with jabs and sometimes following them with right hands.
In the fourth, it seemed as though Gratii twisted his left ankle, and as he hobbled around the ring while under increasing pressure, the fight was called off after 49 seconds of the round.
Gratii, a Romanian centurion, is now 8-89-4 (4 KOs).
West Ham, England’s Frankie Wood, formerly a good amateur and now 2-0 as a pro, won an all-southpaw junior lightweight four-rounder against Peruvian veteran Cesar Ignacio Paredes.
Wood – trained by Alan Smith – started working his jab early, and he looked for openings to Parades’ body, particularly with the right hand. Wood opened up more in the second, too, clubbing Parades with big left hands. But the Peruvian soaked up everything that came his way, losing each round – and the fight, by the score of 40-36. Paredes dropped to 18-22-1 (5 KOs).
In the show opener at the Bournemouth International Centre, unbeaten heavyweight Iman Zahmatkesh, fighting out of Chichester, England, stopped Bradford, England, southpaw Ryan Labourn in the first round.
A right uppercut put Labourn down, and as he climbed up off one knee, he stumbled and the referee waved it off. Labourn dropped to 0-33-2 and was stopped for the eighth time.
Imam is now 5-0 (4 KOs), and the time of the stoppage was 2:34 of Round 1.