By Scott Gilfoid: British welterweight champion Frankie Gavin (14-0, 10 KO’s) will be making his first defense of his British strap on January 18th against 26-year-old challenger Jason Welborn (11-1, 5 KO’s) at the Town Hall, in Walsall, England.
Gavin, 27, is coming off of a mostly one-sided in over 38-year-old former WBC light welterweight champion Junior Witter last November at York Hall, in Bethnal Green, London. Gavin didn’t look impressive early in the fight, as he struggled with Witter’s hand speed and power.
However, by the 3rd round, Witter started slowing down, not punching as much and showing his age. This allowed the slower Gavin to take charge of the fight and dominate the action the rest of the way with his higher work rate. But despite winning the fight, Gavin was less than impressive because he didn’t show much in the way of power and his hand speed was average at best. He just looked like a limited fighter beating a 40ish fighter that was way past his best and who could no longer pull the trigger on his punches.
Gavin, #8 WBO, wants to fight for a world title in the near future but it’s hard to picture him in there with WBO champion Tim Bradley because it would be such a terrible mismatch. Bradley may not have great power, but he’s certainly a couple levels above Gavin in the talent department.
Gavin looked like hell in winning a controversial 12 round split decision to Curtis Woodhouse in July of 2011. I thought the scoring of that fight was incredibly bad because I had Woodhouse winning the fight by four rounds and no way did I think Gavin did enough to deserve a close win. He fought well enough to lose by four rounds. But the controversial win isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that Gavin just doesn’t have the skills to do much in the welterweight division other than hold down a domestic level strap in my view. He’s too limited and lacks the talent to get to the next level and succeed.
Also on the card will be lightweight Martin Gethin facing Ben Murphy in a scheduled 12 round bout.
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