Victory for King Kong Carroll on live on Sky

JONO Carroll registered a shut out victory over tricky customer Carlos Perez on his Matchroom debut in Leeds on Saturday getting another exciting night of Irish boxing off to a good start.

Hours before Andy Lee defends his middleweight title in New York, on a card that also sees Ryan Burnett in action the Celtic Warrior Gym fighter had his hand raised, the referee awarding him a 60-54 win.

‘King Kong’ was certainly felt at home on the big stage playing to the camera’s before glove off and even ‘whooping’ Rick Flair style seconds before he began the six round contest.

The talkative southpaw won the first three rounds comfortably, but found it hard to put an sustained pressure on the defensively astute Spaniard. From the fourth on, however, the Prizefighter winner began to find his range and landed some big shots in each of the final three stanza’s.

He worked the body with success and came down the home stretch strong en route to one of those points win that stand to fighters as they progresses. Carroll always looked the more talented and certainly the stronger and with more time or indeed more rounds could have stopped his opponent, who came to the ring with a winning record.

A more persistent jab might be added to the arsenal, but Carroll, who was competing for only the seventh time as a pro- and three of those clashes played out in Prizefighter, did seem content to bank the rounds and boxed within himself.

After grabbing the victory Carroll grab his chance to have his say in the post fight interview. He didn’t let his opponent land to many punches and only let Sky get one question in post fight.

The charismatic Pascal Collins trained puncher revealed it was a dream come true to fight on such a big show and thanked the man known in Dublin as Eddie ‘A’Hearn’ for giving him the opportunity.

“I think the performance was good. There was a little bit rust early one, but once I let my shots got I was happy. He was tricky and kept ducking his head and holding inside. I was delighted I got the six rounds in. If he had been in the ring much longer I think I would have stopped him,” Said Carroll.

“It is a dream come true to fight on Sky and on a card like this.”