BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND \u2013 It was the fight on the Ben Whittaker-Liam Cameron II bill many were arguably most looking forward to.<\/p>\n
Bournemouth\u2019s in-form Lee Cutler was taking on the evergreen warrior Sam Eggington, from nearby Smethwick, and ringsiders polled by BoxingScene were split. Several fancied the emerging Cutler, while others though the veteran and fellow Englishman Eggington might be able to contain and outbox his younger challenger.<\/p>\n
In the end, no one seemed especially satisfied after the referee, Mark Bates, ruled that Eggington could not continue after the bell sounded to start the ninth round.<\/p>\n
Eggington had taken on plenty of facial damage \u2013 as had Cutler \u2013 by the time the end came, and Eggington was awarded the decision by margins of 87-85, 90-83, and 87-85.<\/p>\n
It was announced the ninth round was scored because the bell sounded, even though the fighters did not come close to landing a blow on one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis man\u2019s no joke,\u201d said Eggington.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I was winning. I gave maybe two rounds away trying to be cute, and I\u2019m not cute. I genuinely thought I won the fight cleanly. Lee Cutler is cut from the same cloth as me and he will come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were signs that Cutler\u2019s youth might be served early on. He landed first when they were in close and scored as they came out of clinches.<\/p>\n
But Eggington had plenty of his own success, double jabbing and planting a right squarely into Cutler\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
Eggington had speculated that Cutler would try to outbox him, but Cutler had contended he would be there for a war. The Bournemouth fighter was not moving his head enough, while the veteran had a relaxed look about him and boxed with his hands down, but as they came together near the end of the second their heads clashed and Eggington was left with a nasty wound below his right eye, which was bleeding profusely.<\/p>\n
Both got to work in the third.\u00a0They fired away at one another\u2019s body and Eggington\u2019s right eye was starting to close.<\/p>\n
As they battled in close, Eggington slotted in uppercuts, but Cutler marched forwards and didn\u2019t stop throwing.<\/p>\n
Cutler was more defensively responsible at the start of the fourth. Eggington tried to make room to work but every time he did so Cutler stepped with him and threw shots.<\/p>\n
A right hand landed on Cutler\u2019s head with a thud, and Cutler was marked up by his left eye.<\/p>\n
Both tried to establish their jabs in the fifth and the range suited Eggington more. He was able to catch Cutler on the end of some of his longer shots, then, near the end of the session with Eggington\u2019s back to the ropes, he cracked Cutler with two hard right hands that clearly registered.<\/p>\n
Cutler\u2019s corner implored him to \u201cchip away downstairs\u201d, in the sixth as the blood flowed down his left cheek. Eggington walked through a right hand near the end of the frame and both feinted for openings more in the seventh, with Eggington momentarily slipping face-first to the canvas as he tried to close in on Cutler.\u00a0Again Cutler landed a right near the bell, but there was not enough on it to deter the veteran.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cutler put together a good spell of work to open the eighth round, beating Eggington to the punch at times and counter effectively at others.<\/p>\n
It was at the start of the ninth when the action was paused to assess Eggington\u2019s battered features, and Bates deemed that Eggington could not continue, and that the fight would go to the scorecards.<\/p>\n
Cutler looked dejected at how he had performed and Eggington looked dissatisfied at not being allowed to go on. There was a long, uncertain pause as the fighters \u2013 and the humming crowd \u2013 waited for the scorecards to be tallied and announced.<\/p>\n
Cutler, 15-2 (7 KOs), had been coming off a career best-win, having dropped and outscored the Irish prospect Stephen McKenna in Liverpool in December. Despite that, he conceded that Eggington was the best opponent he had faced and that he knew he would be tested.<\/p>\n
Trained by former fighter Josh Pritchard as part of the McGuigan\u2019s Gym stable, where he works alongside the former WBO cruiserweight champion and childhood friend Chris Billam-Smith, and reigning champions Ellie Scotney and Caroline Dubois, Cutler was the fighter in the ascendency, and hoping to fulfil his dream of headlining in Bournemouth.<\/p>\n
Shane McGuigan and his hall-of-fame inductee father, Barry, were in attendance to support Cutler from ringside.<\/p>\n
The Jon Pegg-trained Eggington, who two fights previously lost to Abass Barou on a majority decision for the vacant European junior-middleweight title, is 36-9 (20 KOs).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND \u2013 It was the fight on the Ben Whittaker-Liam Cameron II bill many were arguably most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,4496,4495,21538,21539,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-37544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-news","10":"tag-boxingscene","11":"tag-lee-cutler","12":"tag-sam-eggington","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114374372481009758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}