By Sean McDaniel: British light heavyweight champion Tony Bellew (17-1, 11 KO’s) easily defeated former EBU light heavyweight champion Danny McIntosh (13-3, 7 KO’s) by a highlight reel 5th round knockout out Friday night at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK. McIntosh was knocked down at the end of the fourth round, and it was clear he wasn’t going to last long into the 5th.

Just seconds after a clash of heads, the 29-year-old Bellew connected with a big right hand that dropped McIntosh flat on his back on the canvas where he laid with both hands stretched out to the sides. The fight was then halted at :038 of the round.

McIntosh, 32, never really did started in the fight, as he seemed to lack the determination to take the shots necessary to win the fight. He made a huge mistake of trying to jab with Bellew on the outside and it just didn’t work.

Bellew had the longer reach and the much better jab. He was able to land a lot of jabs when McIntosh was on the outside. But more than that, Bellew was landing repeated power shots in the form of fight hands and left hooks to the head of McIntosh.

Although it was one-sided, it wasn’t completely one-sided because McIntosh was still able to land good right hands in every round of the fight and he was able to redden Bellew’s right eye. Had the fight gone the full 12, Bellew’s right eye likely would have closed up completely. Bellew was just lucky that McIntosh wasn’t a busier fighter because he would have given him a lot of problems.

Bellew was dominant from the start of the fight, hitting McIntosh with ramrod jabs and big right hands again and again. McIntosh did next to nothing in the 1st or the 2nd rounds. He landed only occasionally, and was kept busy by Bellew’s constant power shots.

McIntosh lost his mouthpiece in the 3rd and the 4th rounds after taking some really big shots. It looked like McIntosh was either spitting it out on purpose to get a stoppage of the action so he could get a rest break from the heavy shots he was eating or he simply had a bad fitting mouthpiece and it was slipping out all the time when he was getting tagged.

After the fight, Bellew said he wanted to get a rematch with WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly, and was willing to fight him in Wales just to make the fight happen.