“How could you celebrate that?” – Sutcliffe hits out at Leather following “disgraceful” win

Phil Sutcliffe Jnr [13(8)-2(1)] suggests Josh Leather should be embarrassed by the fact he was awarded victory over Glenn Foot earlier this month and should be ashamed of how he celebrated the win.

Having stopped ‘Succo’ controversially in the sixth round of their fight in May, the Frank Warren prospect defended his IBF East/West Europe ranking belt against a fired up Foot.

The favourite was dropped in the second round and, although he showed flashes of class, many felt he was out worked by the Sunderland native and were upset when the Middlesborough native was awarded a unanimous decision, with judges’ tallies of 115-110, 113-112, and 114-111.

Sutcliffe was certainly one of those surprised labeling the scoring “ridiculous.”

The 28 year old Dubliner also questioned Leather’s reaction to being awarded the win, describing it as embarrassing.

“It was disgraceful,” he told Irish-Boxing.com.

“How could you celebrate that? Glenn Foot, I have to hand it to him I actually thought Josh would have done a number on him and out boxed him, but Foot got his game plan right and Josh got too emotional in the fight. The scores were ridiculous everyone knows Glenn Foot won that fight.”

If Foot got his tactics spot on, did Sutcliffe then miss a trick when he faced the same opponent in May? Not necessarily according to the Crumlin BC graduate who returns to the ring this Friday in Belfast on the ‘Danger at the Devenish 2’ bill.

‘Young Phil’ revealed he didn’t carry out his father and coach Phil Sutcliffe Snr’s instructions early on and claims he was denied the chance to amend things by a faulty stoppage from Howard Foster.

The former Irish Elite Senior champion and EU bronze medalist felt he would have taken over in the latter rounds and that belief has only being cemented by Leather’s display against Foot.

“Well look, if they would have let the fight go ahead it would have been a different story.To be honest I didn’t carry out the game plan early on. I was a bit lax and lacked a bit of energy, but I felt I was warming into it and I always come alive in the later rounds. I was only trying to get into the fight and I think it would have been different if the fight wasn’t stopped, which it shouldn’t have been.”

Sutcliffe has expressed his upset at the manner in which his fight with Leather [13(6)-0] was stopped – having been on his feet and just after landing an overhand right – but hasn’t been overly vocal about his anger, opting instead to go the old boxing ‘take your loss like a man’ route.

However, he claims if he would have been on the end of a decision a-la Foot he may have reacted differently.

“Look the referee made a terrible decision but he won on the night. Then again after seeing the Foot fight if that would have happened to me I’d have been worse. If I had have beat him up and lost by scores like that I don’t know what I would have done. He got it by five, four and three rounds? How?”