By Scott Gilfoid: Looking like a can’t miss future champion, unbeaten British light middleweight prospect Jamie Cox (5-0, 2 KOs) made short work of his overmatched opponent David Kehoe (9-46-3, 2 KOs), stopping him in the first round on Saturday night on the undercard of Gavin Rees vs. Andreas Kotelnik WBA super lightweight championship bout at the International Arena, in Cardiff, Wales. Cox, only 21, a former Gold medal winner at the Commonwealth games and trained by Richie Woodhall, knocked Kehoe down with a sharp combination a minute into the bout. Kehoe, who looked completely outclassed, got up off the deck and received a standing eight count by the referee.
Several short exchanges later, Cox dropped Kehoe for the second and final time in the round after hitting him with two hard left hands. Though Kehoe got up of the canvas, the referee didn’t like what he saw of his condition and promptly stopped the bout.
Cox, a smooth southpaw from Swindon, England, a dubbed by many as a future champion, looked excellent in the opening moments of the fight as he stalked Kehoe, hitting him with multiple left hands to the head. Kehoe defensively thew a couple of right hands, thrown more in an attempt to ward off Cox’s attack rather than to try and hurt him. It didn’t work. Kehoe landed a blistering right hand and then a lightning fast three punch combination that had Kehoe’s head snapping back and forth from one direction to another with a fraction of a second. Cox quickly unloaded with a hard combination that dropped Kehoe to the canvas. The referee immediately gave Kehoe a standing eight count after he dragged himself off the canvas.
After the action resumed, Cox landed a left on the belt line, which the referee ruled as low. Kehoe used this as an excuse to back away and take a brief timeout to collect him from the low blow, but it looked more like he was still trying to recover from the previous knockout and was buying time. Immediately after the action resumed, Cox tagged Kehoe with a left to the head followed quickly by a chopping right hand which knocked Kehoe down for the second time in the round.
This time, after Kehoe got up the referee stopped the fight at 1:32 of the 1st round. It was a very impressive performance by Cox, who already looks better in my estimation than many of the top fighters in the top 10 in the junior middleweight division, including old war horses like Oscar De La Hoya and Vernon Forrest.