By Nate Anderson: Unbeaten Commonwealth middleweight champion Darren Barker (21-0, 14 KOs) stopped Danny Butler in the 7th round tonight to capture the vacant BBBofC British middleweight title at the Brentwood Center in Brentwood. Barker, 27, picked apart Butler with jabs and right hands throughout the one-sided fight. In the 7th round, referee Richie Davis had seen enough of the one way action and decided to step in and halt the slaughter.

Butler was a replacement for Wayne Elcock, who pulled out of the fight due to an illness. Butler looked unhappy at the stoppage, and it’s hard not to blame him. Butler was still landing and fighting reasonably well given the mismatch.

Butler was way over his head in this fight. He seemed to have no ability to land punches from a distance. The only he was able to have any degree of accuracy was when he’d zoom in quickly and land a short punch either standing right in front of Barker or in a clinch. The rest of the time, Butler was helpless to land his punches and mostly missed.

Barker landed a nice triple left hook in the 1st round. The rest of the round, Barker slowly circled Butler, hitting him with jabs and slow right hands and often pulling his right hand back in an odd way, like he was a power puncher instead of a fighter with only moderate power. In then 2nd and 3rd rounds, Butler continued to have problems landing any punches. He clinched a great deal and would often punch Barker in the clinches, sometimes hitting him on the back of the head. Barker did little in both rounds aside from jabbing. In the 4th round, Butler tried to bull his way in early. However, Barker drove him back with combinations.

In rounds five and six, Barker continued to jab away at the slow moving Butler. By this time, Butler was no longer landing anything and was mostly serving the purpose as a punching dummy for Barker to practice on.

Barker despite winning showed a low of flaws in the fight starting with his tendency to throw lead right hands without setting them up with a jab. If Barker had good hand speed I could see him getting away with this kind of thing against better middleweights than Butler. However, Barker has very little hand speed and needs to set up his right hands with a jab before throwing them.

Baker also has a bad habit of pulling his right arm back and bringing it high over his head in an exaggerated manner as if his right arm was a cannon. I’ve seen fighters do that move before, but only fighters with a lot of power. Barker isn’t a big puncher and it seemed odd and a little comical to observe him pulling his arm back over his head like this. It’s not a good practice to do this. The reason is a quicker fighter could time him and jump in and tag him with a big shot while Barker’s right hand is way over his head. It also isn’t the quickest way to re-cock his arm. Barker instead shouldn’t waste motion and should just pull his arm straight back in fighting position instead of putting on a show for the crowd.