By William Mackay: British and Commonwealth light middleweight champion Anthony Small (23-1, 16 KO’s) successfully defended his titles on Friday night with a 12 round decision over Thomas McDonagh (34-3-3, 7 KO’s) at the Robin Park Centre, Wigan, in Lancashire. Small looked bored for the most, tagging the slow-footed McDonagh pretty much whenever he pleased. However, McDonagh kept the pressure on Small throughout and found success in many of the rounds.

Small, 28, looked incredibly wild with his punches for most of the fight, only seeming to have any degree of accuracy when he was standing a foot in front of McDonagh. Besides all the misses from Small, he clinched continuously throughout the fight making it hard to watch. The clinching was hardly necessary because McDonagh had no power to speak of. Many of the rounds had both fighters landing in the single digits. It wasn’t as if Small wasn’t trying to land, but that most of his wild looping shots missed by a mile.

McDonagh seemed to land with the better accuracy in the 1st half of the fight, which is why the judges scored it so closely. However, starting in the 8th, McDonagh suddenly looked gassed out, and began throwing far less punches. Small noticed this and began to bounce around and look much more confident than he was in the first half of the fight.

Small still missed with the vast majority of his punches, but he was the one making the fight in the second half for the most part. It’s hard to understand why Small missed with so many of his shots, because McDonagh stood upright at all times and was a sitting duck for every shot that Small threw. However, Small seemed to lack hand eye coordination and just sloppy as a person as a bar room brawler.
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Making the 2nd fight since staging a comeback after four years absence, Michael Brodie was stopped in the 3rd round by Anthony Crolla. Brodie was down in the 3rd round and the bout was stopped after he got to his feet. At 35, Brodie might want to consider hanging up the boxing gloves for good.

Brodie did a decent job of pressuring Crolla in rounds one and two, ducking and dodging many of Crolla’s shots as he pressed forward. Brodie looked like his old self in these two rounds and landed some nice shots. However, he got hit with some hard left hooks and right hands as well, and it didn’t look good the way that his head would snap back when Crolla would land cleanly.

In the 3rd round, Brodie suddenly looked weary and old, as he threw fewer punches and was caught over and over again by big shots from Crolla. Early in the round, Crolla appeared to hurt Broidie with a hard left hook to the head that snapped Brodie’s head back violently. Moments later, Crolla caught Brodie in the corner and unleashed a blizzard of shots many of them connecting cleanly. Brodie attempted to duck and cover up but many of the shots still landed.

Somehow Brodie made it out of the corner and got to the center of the ring briefly. However, Crolla quickly tagged him with a big right hand that hurt Brodie sending him retreating back into the corner. Crolla then unloaded on the near helpless Brodie, who looked much older than his 35 years. Finally, Crolla connected with a left-right combination that sent Brodie down on his back on the canvas. Brodie made it up at the count of nine, but the referee stopped it anyway because it was clear that Brodie had no chance if the bout had been allowed to continue any further.

At this point, it would be wise for Brodie to consider retiring from boxing. Crolla is a good fighter, but he’s not nearly as good as Brodie made him look. If Brodie is comfortable being a journeyman or trial horse for the younger fighters, then he should continue on with his career. But if he wants to be a factor in British boxing he doesn’t appear to have the skills anymore.