Another excellent show very professionally staged by Master Sken as usual. The show had some real quality fights and excellent and exciting individual performances. It also was brilliant to see the generosity of the spectators towards the Kick for Cancer charity in buying raffle tickets and in the bidding for prizes. All the hard work from Richard, Dave and Master Sken etc. paid off along with the generous donations of signed gloves etc from a number of people including Howard (Hughes) whose signed gloves went down well with the bidders.

It was good to see the consistency of judging on the show with every decision (I think) being unanimous (well done Liam R, Dave J, Gary Mc and Mike H). Rachael put in another brave performance in taking the fight to the vastly more experienced Dauprasuk. Rachael certainly did her coach Dave Croft proud and managed to land with some good punches and elbows but was outscored by a skilful and clever Champion who has an impressive winning streak against the world’s top females. We all wanted Rachael to win and I know some in the crowd thought she had done enough to get the decision but she was scored on too frequently with body kicks and knees and all three judges (me included) gave it to the Thai girl. I am sure Rachael will be back stronger than ever from this experience.

There were plenty of good performances and exciting fights including Colin Johnson and David Barlow’s war: first Colin getting dropped and then David getting stopped. Jordan’s excellent demonstration of skill against a really brave and determined Stevie Patterson. The brave Scottish fighter just would give in despite taking some very hard shots which finally caught up with him in the fourth.

Michael Dicks put in a very explosive performance against a strong looking opponent finishing him with a devastating punch that looked like it would stop anything in its way in the 2nd. Michael scored earlier in the round with some very strong knees and also hurt his game opponent with strong punches but however tough, Azalin Amazian (nor many others) wasn’t ever going to get up from that final punch. Thankfully after some oxygen from the paramedics he was fine.

Liam’s and Rungsiam’s fight was a closely fought battle. As Gary said, Rungsiam started stronger edging the first round (but not enough for a clear point) and then winning the second. However, Liam came back very strongly scoring with some good kicks. Rungsiam was able to block a number of Liam’s kicks but others had him loosing position. I had Liam winning rounds 3 and 4 and drawing the final round. My score was 49:48 to Liam. Dave (Jackson) and Mike (Haslam) (the other two judges) had it very close as well (Dave I think Liam by two points and Mike Liam by one point). Although a couple of people I spoke to after the fight thought Rungsiam had done enough to steal the decision, I though it was a good decision and was again a unanimous one in what was a very close fight.

Great show. Well done to all the fighters, coaches and officials and particularly to Master Sken.