By Tim Royner: Former super bantamweight world title challenger Gavin McDonnell (19-1-2, 5 KOs) had too much experience and class for domestic level fighter Gamal Yafai (14-1, 7 KOs0 in beating him by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night on the undercard of the Kell Brook vs. Sergey Rabchenko card on Sky Sports at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, England.
The judges’ scores were fairly close with the 31-year-old McDonnell getting the edge by the scores 116-112, 116-112 and 117-112. Boxing News was scored it to McDonnell by 8 rounds to 4. Yafai, the younger brother of IBF super flyweight champion Kal Yafai, didn’t have enough of his brother’s huge talent to be able to beat McDonnell, who used his big height and reach advantage to pound out a victory tonight.
McDonnell’s high volume punching is what ultimately was too much for the 26-year-old Yafai. He wasn’t able to keep up with McDonnell.
Yafair put in a good performance in losing. He was landing a lot of good shots, but he didn’t have the work rate to keep up with McDonnell.
Gavin McDonnell is the brother of WBA bantamweight champion Jamie McDonnell. A lot of boxing fans see Jaime as the better fighter of the two. Gavin lost in his previous bid to win a world title against Rey Vargas last year in February in a 12 round majority decision defeat. Vargas had too much talent for McDonnell to deal with in that fight.
In other boxing results on tonight’s Brook vs. Rabchenko card, heavyweights David Allen (12-3-2, 9 KOs) and Lenroy Thomas (22-4-1, 10 KOs) saw their fight end in a 1st round technical draw. The fight was stopped almost immediately after Allen suffered a cut from a clash of heads in round 1. The referee was quick to have the fight stopped. Allen was never even given a chance to get to his corner to see if his trainer could stop the bleeding.
It looked like the fight was halted far too quickly. Allen was trying to avenge his loss from last year against Thomas. After the fight, Thomas said he’d be willing to come over to the UK o face Allen again if promoter Eddie Hearn is willing to come up with the money to make it worthwhile. Allen needs to avenge the loss, but it might be risky to make a third fight if Thomas is going to be coming forward with his head down like he did tonight. With the way Thomas fights, it’s possible we could see another cut-ending fight like the one we saw tonight.