By Alexey Sukachev

A small tournament, promoted by Herve Jacques at Stadium P. Maisonniale in Saint-Etienne, France, is under way. In the main event,In a fight between two cruiserweight veterans, WBC #24 Rachid El Hadak (20-8-1, 7 KOs) acquired a vacant European Boxing Association title and received a spot in upcoming WBA rankings with a hard-fought workmanlike twelve-round unanimous decision over Czech Roman Karcik (31-4-1, 17 KOs).

The first half of this fight was in El Hadak's favour. The Frenchman was sitting low with his left hand at his waist and placed his bet on reflexes and speed. Kracik, your typical straight-up Central European fighter, was battling out of block with rare, hard jabs coming into the face of El Hadak but almost without any use of his right hand. The Frenchman, therefore, was able to avoid being hit cleanly while landing left jabs, occasional right crosses and left hooks to the liver on daily basis. However, he got tired in the middle rounds, which resulted in the second half of this match-up to be even.

Kracik finally started to tag El Hadak both with his jabs and with his power crosses but he was still too inactive to pose any significant problems. Fatigued El Hadak was forced to clinch in rounds 9 and 10 but took the penultimate stanza. Both fighters went into each other in the last round but it was Kracik who came out as a winner of this span. It proved to be too little and to late nevertheless, as all judges gave their votes for the local favorite El Hadak. BoxingScene had it 117-112 - also in favour of Rachid El Hadak.

In the most important of the supportive bouts, durable French journeyman Frank Haroche Horta moved up to 23-8-4, with 7 KOs, after an impressive stoppage of previously undefeated Latvian light middleweight Sergejs Malcevs (6-1, 5 KOs) at 1:52 of the very first round. Malcevs was down thrice after left hooks (twice to the head and initial one - to the body) before action was halted by the referee.

Also, heavyweight hope Newfel Ouatah (6-0, 5 KOs) annihilated Latvia Alexandrs Selezens (4-10, 2 KOs) in two rounds. The 2008 Beijing Olympian for Morroco was just too much for his soft and out-of-shape foe but didn't succeed in putting Selezens down. The bout was stopped by Latvian's cornermen after another huge right hand by Ouatah.

Other results:

Damien Retif (3-12-1) PTS 4 Vousoumna Gatsoumna (2-3-1, 1 KO)

Sezer Erunsal (3-9-1, 1 KO) PTS 4 Brice Romaingoux (0-1)