Olympic champion Lauren Price won’t have many easier tasks in her career than the one she faced against Hungary’s Timea Belik, whose almost complete lack of defence made her incredibly easy to hit, as she completed a fourth-round stoppage on the Shields-Marshall bill at the O2 Arena, London.

Price, who won gold in Tokyo at middleweight but is now boxing at welterweight. She is not regarded as a big puncher, but she could not miss the Hungarian.

Belik walked forward throwing punches, but whenever she threw a shot, she would leave herself completely open to the counter.

For the first two rounds, Price was content to stay tight behind her guard and bang away with hooks whenever Belik over-stretched.

She started the third round with a four-punch combination and while you cannot criticise Bilek’s guts, she was completely out of her depth. Three lefts knocked Bilek across the ring, but she was able to hold.

The fourth round continued to be completely one-sided with Bilek merely clinging on to Price after she was hit. Eventually referee Mark Bates brought an end to the mismatch, stopping it at 1:18, for Price’s second professional win and first stoppage.

Karriss Artingstall, who won a bronze medal at the Tokyo Games, handed out a pasting to Marina Sakharov, of France, over six rounds to record her second successive win at featherweight. In an incredibly one-sided fight, Sakharov showed remarkable durability but barely landed a punch, whereas Artingstall hardly missed.

Artingstall set a furious pace from the start, pinging straight southpaw lefts straight down the middle and banging away with rights to the body. Sakharov took the lot and, while she walked forward, her own punches lacked any snap and seldom even came close to landing.

For the first three rounds, Sakharov was under complete bombardment and while she took her time a little more in the fourth round, the French boxer’s job was to effectively soak up punishment.

Artingstall battered her in the fifth, mixing up punches in combinations, but Sakharov kept walking forward.

Referee Mark Bates scored it 60-54 but in reality it could have been wider, despite there being no knockdowns.

Caroline Dubois was also completely dominant against the game, but limited, Milena Koleva, who took no end of clean shots before being stopped in the fifth round of six.

Dubois took about a minute to find her range in the first round before she started landing big shots, often drawing Koleva’s lead before landing a big swinging hook.

The punishment piled up for the Bulgarian and near the end of the fourth round she was dropped by a short right hook, although she seemed off balance. But Dubois was not about to let her off the hook and in the fifth, she trapped Koleva on the ropes and bashed away with both hands, referee Sean McAvoy eventually stepping in at 1:53 of the round as Koleva sank towards the floor.

Dubois is now 4-0 with three stoppages.

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.