By Nate Anderson: BBBofC British light middleweight champion Ryan Rhodes (40-4, 27 KOs) successfully defended his title for the first time with a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision against a badly over-matched Jamie Coyle (16-4-1, 8 KOs) on Saturday night at the Hillsborough Leisure Centre, Sheffield, in Yorkshire. The final judges’ scores were 120-109, 118-111 and 120-110. Although the scores were badly one-sided like the fight, Coyle fought bravely, taking countless shots from the first until the final 12th round, yet coming back with his own punches as often as he could given his mismatch in speed and boxing skills. In the end, I seemed to completely forget about Rhodes as I began to root for Coyle to come back and make a fight of it.
Indeed, after taking an enormous amount of punishment at the hands of the 31 year-old Rhodes for the first five rounds, turning Coyle’s head a bright red, he came back strong in the sixth and seventh round, hitting the shorter 5’8″ Rhodes with nice combinations and winning both rounds. However, he didn’t have anywhere near the talent that the southpaw Rhodes had and was hopelessly out of his league against him before the fight even started. It was one of those kinds of mismatches that should have been stopped early on in the fight, ideally after the 5th round when it was already painfully obvious that Coyle was taking a royal beating and had no chance.
It was ugly up until that point, and I couldn’t see how the fight was being allowed to continue, because Coyle was getting with a massive amount of head shots from Rhodes and only rarely was he throwing anything back. Rhodes, a nifty fighter with slick moves and good speed, just didn’t have the kind of power to take him out. That’s the weakness in Rhodes’ game, and the reason I don’t ever see him progressing beyond his BBBofC British light middleweight title, but on this night I wished he had enough power to finish Coyle because this fight needed to have been stopped.
Like someone who had been in a war, Coyle seemed to will himself back into the fight in the 6th, fighting like someone who was fighting for more than a simple BBBof C title, he walked through Rhodes’ rain of shots to get off his own power shots, and by the end of the round, he had Rhodes on the retreat. The crowd, who came into the fight cheering for Rhodes, began to back to underdog and root loudly for him. Coyle continued to fight well in the 7th round, throwing nice combinations to the head and giving Rhodes a lot of trouble.
That, unfortunately, was it for Coyle, for he was too tired and beaten by the end of the round to be much more of a threat in the remaining five rounds. Rhodes then came back in round eight to punish Coyle with combinations to the head and body. Once again, it became an ugly one-sided fight, one that I personally think should have been stopped at this point. In rounds nine through twelve, Rhodes badly beat an exhausted and already beaten down Coyle, hitting him with punches from all angles while avoiding his occasional slow and awkward shots.