Early Saturday Results: Buckland Wins Prizefighter, Stieglitz Beats Ornelas

London, England

In the best Prizefighter tournament ever, both in terms of depth from top to bottom and in term of the quality of fights, Gary Buckland pulled off a decent upset in winning the super featherweight Prizefighter tournament.  In a solid fight, Buckland knocked out Derry Matthews with a body shot in the second round.  Matthews controlled the first round early, but Buckland knocked Matthews down in the middle of the first round.  While Matthews managed to survive on weak legs for the remainder of the round, Buckland seized the opportunity and stayed on top of him in the second, eventually crippling Matthews with a body punch.

Second Round: Upset city in the second round.  In a great back and forth battle, Derry Matthews beat Choi in a close one.  Both men were rocked multiple times, though Matthews seemed to land the more accurate punches while Choi landed the harder punches.  If you can, try to check out the second round of that one, which was one of the best rounds of the year.  In the second fight, Gary Buckland landed a huge right hand on reigning British champ Gary Sykes, knocking him out and handing Sykes the first loss of his career.

First Round: Choi Tseveenpurev beat Ben Murphy in a three round mini-war, with Choi winning by scores of 29-28. Derry Matthews won a third round knockout over Gary McArthur after knocking him down in the first and twice in the second round, in an exciting fight where McArthur was the aggressor but Matthews countered with hard and accurate shots. Gary Sykes fought as aggressively as he ever has in dominating Scott Lawton.  Gary Buckland beat Stevie Bell by bulldozing Bell in the last two rounds.  All four first round fights had very solid action.

Dresden, Germany

Robert Stieglitz UD12 Enrique Ornelas - Quite possibly the European fight of the year so far, Stieglitz did well early, but Ornelas took over as the fight went on and became more of a war.  For most of the early rounds, Stieglitz thoroughly outclassed Ornelas, using his size and strength advantage to back Ornelas up into the ropes and pound on him there.  As the fight wore on, Stieglitz did start to fade, and Ornelas took over.  After several good rounds, round 12 turned into an all-out war as Ornelas tried to go for the knockout.  Unfortunately, Ornelas just doesn't have the raw tools of his brother (Librado Andrade, who knocked out Stieglitz in his last loss), and wasn't able to capitalize with a knockout.  The 117-111 scores may have been a bit wide, but the right man probably won.

Nysa, Poland

Rafal Jackiewicz UD8 Ronny McField - In his first fight after losing a title bout to Jan Zaveck, Jackiewicz was able to get by McField, but struggled more than he should have against a 13-7 fighter.  He reportedly struggled with weight, so the already smallish Jackiewicz may be contemplating a move to light middleweight in the future.  

Nagoya, Japan

Kohei Oba UD10 Fuka Nakagishi - Oba comes back from his July loss to Malcolm Tunacao with a wide decision win over Nakagishi at 122 pounds. Oba held the Japanese bantamweight title for a while and was challenging Tunacao for the OPBF belt at 118. In fact the only blemishes on his record (28-1-1, 11 KO) are to Tunacao, as the two drew in 2006, which was also for the OPBF bantamweight title. -Scott

Castlebar, Ireland

Andy Murray UD10 Claudinei Lacerda - Probably time for Murray, 28, to up the competition a little, but he sure is active. He recently called out John Murray (no kin), who holds the European lightweight belt. -Scott