Often when you reach the end of a fight and the winner doesn’t feel like the winner and the loser doesn’t feel like the loser, you can be sure of two things. You can be sure that, one, there has been some sort of controversy, caused either by a referee or three judges, and two, that there are grounds for a rematch, potentially a lucrative one. 

All this rang true in Belfast last night when Paddy Donovan conspired to beat himself while in a winning position against Lewis Crocker in the eighth round of an all-Irish welterweight fight. He did so by testing the patience of referee Marcus McDonnell, first with the placement of his head and then later, and critically, a right hook Donovan landed after the bell which dropped Crocker on his back and led to a disqualification in round eight. He had, by that stage, lost only a round – maybe two. He had, by that stage, answered every question asked of him and looked every inch the next star of Irish boxing many have been calling him from day one. Perhaps it was only impatience, then, that got to Paddy Donovan in the end. Or if not that, the exuberance of youth. Perhaps he just got carried away. 

Whatever the reason for the DQ, the act and danger of punching an opponent after the bell is something judged only when measured against its impact. Meaning, if a punch lands after the bell and it is met by a solid target or, at worst, a poked-out tongue or a complaint, all that tends to happen is that the instigator receives a telling off on the way back to the corner. If, however, the punch should prove critical, maybe even fight-changing, the act itself becomes another thing entirely. Now, you see, rather than just a display of petulance in the heat of the moment, the after-the-bell punch has become decisive and the fight has changed in an instant. 

It is at that point the referee, for all his desire to see the fight continue, is left with only one decision to make. After all, should he play it down and let the fight continue when one of the two boxers has been hurt or even floored by what is an illegal punch, he would then leave himself open to all manner of criticism should the fight conclude the way most would expect it to now conclude. 

It’s a shame, of course, for any fight to end in this manner, but the impact of Donovan’s shot left no room for either debate or even the possibility of another outcome. Had he known this – that is, the impact his right hook would have – he would have likely never thrown it in the first place, whether he heard the bell or not. He would have instead pulled the shot or simply stopped a punch or two earlier in the sequence.  

Rather than do that, Donovan just followed his attack through to its natural conclusion. With the momentum all his, and with Crocker very much there for the taking, Donovan kept punching and punching until his body, not the bell, told him when it was time to stop. This meant that he would continue to flow for as long as his body remained in that flow state and that even if the last punch of the combination happened to be late it was not so much a choice as the finishing of a sentence already halfway to being written. 

It was, for better or worse, that kind of fight. The action had never been more frenetic, the stakes had never been higher, and Donovan, by punching for longer than he should have, was merely giving the fans every ounce of whatever he had in the final knockings of that thrilling eighth round. Ideally, upon the shot landing, Crocker would have taken it on the chin, spat defiance, and then walked back to the corner infuriated but keen to return the favour in the next round. Ideally, he would have moaned to the referee about it. 

That none of these things happened became not a point of pride for Donovan but instead the worst-case scenario. For now, by pushing his luck, he had not just blurred the lines between what is legal and illegal – again – but he had this time done it in a way that had irreparable consequences. Now the option of a point being docked was deemed not enough, by way of compensation, for an opponent having his senses scrambled and the entire course of the fight being changed by a punch which should have never been thrown. 

The real bone of contention here, of course, has a lot to do with that very phrase: “the course of the fight.” Because Donovan will argue, quite rightly, that the fight was going in only one direction when his illegal shot landed and that nothing really changed as a result of it. In fact, the single hope Crocker had, it appeared, was predicated on Donovan either losing enough points, via deductions, to make the scorecards a little closer at the end of 12 rounds, or, better still, Donovan using his head one too many times and causing a pernickety referee to disqualify him that way instead. 

It was a peculiar quirk of Donovan’s, the way he used his head, and it so dearly cost him, too. In round four, he was warned about it for the first time, and then points deductions followed in rounds six and eight, the round remembered now for an entirely different transgression. 

Why his head couldn’t keep away from Crocker, only he knows, but it was clear to all that Donovan’s use of the head was less malicious than it was tactical, or just instinctive. It seemed, in addition to how he continually pawed his gloves in the face of Crocker, that this was a way for Donovan to maintain some control when up close and also keep Crocker at the kind of range he wanted him. Time and time again Donovan’s head would go beyond his front foot and it would either arrive before or immediately follow combinations of punches. Never butted, just poked or sometimes rested on Crocker’s head, it was nevertheless a constant cause of irritation for Crocker early before later exacerbating the cuts and swelling around his left eye. 

Some will say Donovan had no need to put himself in danger like that – danger of disqualification, that is – but increasingly it seemed harder for him to not fight this way than to fight this way. It appeared, in other words, a style issue more so than a discipline issue, and sometimes these style issues, being as they are things that happen naturally and without thought, are the toughest things to curb or overcome. 

In the case of Donovan, the threat of disqualification represented the only black mark on an otherwise excellent performance – almost punch perfect, in fact – and, bizarrely, the only conceivable way for the fight to end without his hand being raised. To have that threat hanging over him for the entire second half of the fight, which is what would have happened had it not ended in round eight, would have been quite the test of Donovan’s mentality. It would have also given an otherwise one-sided fight that element of jeopardy and given Lewis Crocker, a man whose vision deteriorated more and more with each round, some faint hope. 

As it happened, Donovan’s head was not the issue – at least not in any literal sense. In truth, it was for the most part used well, his head. When it wasn’t touching his opponent’s, Donovan used his head to think and scheme, cleverly varying the power of his shots in order to keep Crocker having to either reset or simply contend with whatever was coming his way. Always on the move, round after round Donovan kept the Belfast man guessing and at times dazzled with his footwork, combination-punching, and ability to get in and get out while leaving Crocker swinging at thin air. 

Occasionally, it’s true, Donovan did get carried away and was caught, particularly by Crocker’s left hook, but these moments were few and far between and after round two it was hard to find many rounds to give Crocker. Crocker, by contrast, was slow of hand and foot and was also the more compact and economical of the two. This meant that while his defence was sound, with his long forearms shielding most of the target, Crocker was seldom in position to then either fire back following a Donovan attack or just match his southpaw opponent’s work rate. 

Even if his intention was to stay tight early and make Donovan work to exhaustion, Crocker’s plan was not helped by either the confidence Donovan was building or the damage he, Crocker, was receiving. By round four, in fact, his face was a complete mess, with cuts around the left eye, and this damage was not being done by Donovan’s head, as Marcus McDonnell confirmed to the judges at the round’s end. It was being done by the Limerick man’s left and right gloves. 

With these gloves Donovan, now 14-1 (11), tagged every part of Crocker’s body – upstairs and down – and relished finding openings on a fighter unwilling to offer any voluntarily. Often during his search for them he would smile when spotting one, be it a left cross to the body or a right hook to the head, and he would also smile whenever he made Crocker miss, either by ducking under the incoming punch or spinning off to the side. 

It was never perfect, no, but given the pressure and the temperature of battle, the temerity and talent shown by Donovan last night was something to behold. There were important boxes ticked along the way, too. In round five, for example, Donovan caught a big left hook from Crocker early and took it well, showing no after-effects; he then caught the same shot towards the end of the round and again showed no sign of being troubled or hurt. In addition, there was never any feeling that Donovan, despite his output, was about to punch himself out or suffer later in the fight, owing perhaps to the intelligence of mixing up the power of his shots and forever chipping away rather than looking for the knockout. 

As such, he was able to relax, enjoy himself. He did things at his own pace and was only really forced out of his comfort zone, and off his time schedule, by the referee’s preoccupation with what he was doing with his head. Suddenly, because of that, Donovan had no choice but to be conscious of how many rounds were left and how many more fouls he could afford to commit before the fight was prematurely finished. 

By the eighth, it was becoming difficult to ignore that very real possibility. By then Donovan had been docked a point in round six – as well as accused of using an elbow by Crocker in that same round – and warned again in the seventh, when Crocker turned away and declared his own “time out”.