Buckland suffers first pro defeat

11:18am Monday 16th June 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

NEWPORT St Joseph's lightweight Gary Buckland slipped to the first defeat of his sixteen fight paid career at Portsmouth's Mountbatten Centre on Friday night when he lost out to Hove's tough Ben Murphy by the narrowest of margins, referee Ken Curtis scoring the six rounder 58-57 in Murphy's favour.

Well supported Ben, 27, had won his first four bouts but his most recent outing, at Bethnal Green's York Hall in December, had seen him slip to a four round points defeat at the hands of classy London based Mauritian Michael Frontin.

Current Celtic champion Buckland meanwhile, with Tony Borg in his corner, had been closing rapidly on the domestic top-ten after an impressive run of form.

Thatwinning runhowever, was halted by the confident, well toned Murphy who had been impressing onlookers at the gym in the run up to this contest. He might well have conceded the opener to the busier Buckland, whose cleaner work earned him an early lead, but he quickly restored parity with a series of body shots that left Gary's ribs reddened.

Buoyed by his success the Hove boxer continued to blast away at the body, staying on the front foot and applying regular pressure, cutting off the ring and forcing Buckland to revert to the jab and even when Gary recouped a little lost ground with a solid right hook to the body off the back foot late in the fifth Murphy never looked like crumbling.

By the last, Gary had picked up a slight nick by the left eye, not helped when heads clashed early in the session. All-action Murphy though, despite having to eat a right uppercut and two right hooks to the head, just kept coming, and a combination to the head in the dying seconds from Buckland proved insufficient for him to earn a share of the spoils.