By Per Ake Persson

Hamburg, Germany: ITS Promotion staged their inaugural promotion at the CU Hall on the outskirts of Hamburg with jr middleweights Ali Mammadov and Nico Salzmann headlining in a fight billed as for the WBC Baltic Silver title. Salzmann, 14-7-3, won after ten exciting, hardfought, messy rounds of boxing over Mammadov, 10-2. It was scored 96-94, 97-93 and 97-91 (with three rounds scored 10-8) for the Berlin-based Salzmann. There were no knockdowns but Mammadov, a southpaw, just kept coming and Salzmann, more experienced, had to use every trick in the book to survive but he scored with sharp counters and had Mammadov hurt at the end of the second. In the later rounds it was an exciting foul-filled brawl with crowd on their feet.

Heavyweight Aleksander Dimitrenko, 34-2, showed again there´s a long way back to the top as he struggled to outscore Croatian Ivica Perkovic over eight. Dimitrenko, now trained by Tommy Brooks, showed good moves but Perkovic was able to counter and even floored Aleksander late in the fourth. It was a flash knockdown but Dimitrenko had problems with both Perkovic and Brooks in the corner. -If you aren´t going to listen I can´t help you, said Brooks after the sixth and after the fight the trainer said "you got to learn to f-n´ listen". It was scored 77-74 twice and 78-74 and the right man won but teaching an East European schooled fighter the American way of fighting is probably not going to work.

Jr middleweight Andreas Reimer, 9-10-2, won the vacant GBU I/C title with a come from behind stoppage of Serbian Predrag Kovacevic, 1-0 coming in. Reimer took his time but was a little too strong down the stretch and floored Kovacevic with a right hook in the seventh and chief cornerman Alexander Petkovic waved the towel and retired his fighter, who wasn´t happy about the stoppage but it was the right thing to do.

Middleweight Rafael Bejaran stopped Czech trialhorse Vladimir Fecko in the third as Fecko went down in pain after what seemed like a bodyshot but probably landed on Fecko´s already sore left arm.

GBU heavyweight champ Alexander Petkovic toyed with debutant Senad Hadzic before stopping his opponent early in the second.