Key events
Liverpool’s Ball becomes Britain’s second current male world champion
A special mention for Great Britain’s newest world champion: Liverpool’s Nick Ball. The 27-year-old Merseysider won a razor-thin split decision over Raymond Ford to capture the WBA featherweight title from Ford in a hugely entertaining back-and-forth fight that certainly demands a rematch.
Two judges scored it 115-113 for Ford, while the third had it scored by the same margin for his American foe.
“He is a tough man and a class boxer. I had to dig deep to get the title,” said Ball, a world champion in his second attempt after being cruelly denied in a controversial March draw against Mexican Rey Vargas.
“I’m made up. I should be twice [champion] but that is not the case. I’m the champion now so it doesn’t really matter,” Ball added.
The Liverpudlian becomes England’s second active male world champion, joining WBO cruiserweight titleholder Chris Billam-Smith.
“It’s how you recover and come back,” Ball said. “That’s a real champion and that’s what I am now.”
Preamble
Hello and welcome to Riyadh’s Kingdom Arena for our in-depth coverage of Deontay Wilder-Zhilei Zhang and Daniel Dubois-Filip Hrgovića pair of fascinating heavyweight matchups that will help shape the future of boxing’s glamor division in the short and long term.
They are the final two fights on a stacked card billed as ‘5 vs 5: Matchroom vs Queensberry’, in which leading British promoters Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren, once bitter rivals, put their respective stables on the line for bragging rights and a reported $3 million on top of the fighters’ individual (and undisclosed) purses.
According to the rules of the format, each boxer earns one point for a decision victory or two for a knockout with no points awarded in the event of a draw. The team captains – Wilder for Matchroom and Sheeraz for Queensberry – will see their individual points doubled. The team with the most points overall wins. A small score bug in the upper left corner of the broadcast will keep track of the running score all night long. (We’d hazard a guess that it’s pretty pointless to all but the most hardcore British fight fans, but a rare team concept that is perhaps the most individual of sports is nothing if not a conversation starter.)
Currently, Queensberry is dog-walking Matchroom by a 6-0 margin with two main attractions to go. Here are the results per fight so far:
• Willy Hutchinson UD 12 Craig Richards QB 1-0 king (QB 1-0 king)
• Nick Ball SD 12 Raymond Ford QB 1-0 king (QB 2-0 king)
• Hamzah Sheeraz TKO 11 Austin Williams QB 4-0 MR (QB 6-0 MR)
There’s one more battle awaiting us that isn’t part of the 5v5 competition (more on that in a moment). Then it’s Dubois vs. Hrgović and Wilder vs. Zhang, in that order.
Bryan will be here soon. In the meantime, here’s the big, er, boxing news of the past 24 hours.