McIntosh Defeats Spartacus

By Boxing News - 10/06/2008 - Comments

By Nate Anderson: Undefeated light heavyweight Danny McInstosh (8-0, 3 KOs) stopped 31 year-old Steven Spartacus (19-5, 11 KOs) in the 7th round of a scheduled 8-round bout to claim the vacant BBBofC English light heavyweight title on Saturday night at the Norwich Showground, in Norwich, Norfolk. McIntosh, 28, knocked Spartacus down with a right hand to the back of the head followed two left hooks.

Upon getting up, the 31 year-old Spartacus was met with a wild flurry of shots from McIntosh, which included a number of clubbing right hands that found a home on the side of Spartacus’ head sending him to the ropes where he attempted futilely to cover up and wait out McIntosh’s flurry. However, referee John Keane stepped in between the two fighters and stopped the bout at 1:35 of the 7th round with Spartacus still on his feet.

The bout was an odd one, with McIntosh looking like gold in the first two rounds, moving like a smaller, slower version of David Haye and hitting Spartacus with mostly slow jabs and clubbing right hands to the head. Other than his poor hand speed and moderate power, McIntosh didn’t look all that bad in the first couple of rounds, good enough possibly to maybe be a passable light heavyweight fighter in the top 15.

However, all the movement he was doing in the round to avoid Spartacus was bound to take the energy out of his at some point, and by the end of the 2nd round, he looked exhausted, drained and no longer punching with any kind of authority. All the punches he threw during the first two rounds did have a slight effect on Spartacus, whose left eye was starting to swell up from the shots that he was nailed by from McIntosh.

In the 3rd round, Spartacus, the much harder puncher, began to take over the fight as he came forward throwing big shots to the body and head of McIntosh. As the round grounded to a halt, Spartacus landed a number of hard body and head shots and had McIntosh looks stressed out. McIntosh could dish it out, but seemed to crumble when taking any kind of punishment and looked for the most part like he was having a mini nervous breakdown while being attacked by Spartacus.

In the 4th round, Spartacus began to focus mostly on landing hard body shots against the taller McIntosh. By this point, McIntosh was mostly backing up and taking punches, looking tired and unable to get any power on his sloppy, hastily thrown shots. He bounced often on his toes, but looked totally spent and could get no energy on his already weak shots. Near the end of the round, Spartacus began to taunt McIntosh, sticking his tongue out at him.

Spartacus controlled the first two minutes of the 5th round. However, in the last minute McIntosh came on strong landing some good left hooks, uppercuts and a few right hands to the head of Spartacus. In the 6th round, the fight looked as if it had gone full circle as Spartacus was no longer punching, just following McIntosh around the ring and taking a lot of shots to the head. McIntosh appeared to have regained his stamina, and winged slow hooks to the head and moved around the ring like once again with ease.

In the 7th round, McIntosh pounded away on the now exhausted Spartacus until hurting him with a right hand that hit him on the back of his head, causing him to stagger and bend over slightly. While he was bent over, McIntosh hit him with two left hooks sending him to the canvas. He got up, but it was clear he wasn’t going to make it out of the ring unless he clinched and held on tight for the remainder of the round.

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t and merely covered up, taking a heavy barrage of wild shots from McIntosh. The referee moved in and halted the fight after Spartacus backed up to the ropes and took one too many head shots.