Luke Campbell learned the lesson all rising prospects are eventually confronted with: you need more than a sharp punch to keep a willing veteran at bay to hang on to your undefeated record.
The 30-year-old French lightweight Yvan Mendy made it plain from the middle stages to the end he had not arrived in London for Christmas shopping when he decked the Olympic gold medallist in the fifth round with a superb left hook at the O2 Arena on Saturday night.
He went on to jab his way to a split decision over 12 rounds and win the WBC’s international title, normally a stepping stone to the real thing. Whether or not he gets that chance will be down to his connections; for Campbell, the job ahead is to start again.
Campbell was dumped heavily but recovered quickly and held his opponent at bay before regrouping in a desperate struggle for the rest of the fight.
Campbell may have been distracted, as his father is battling cancer, and he certainly was not as sharp as he has been in most of his 12 professional fights, all victories. It was not a crushing defeat but an emphatic one, and the scores – cards of 115-113 and 115-112 for Mendy and the other going 115-113 the Hull boxer’s way – were perhaps a little kind to him.
Time and again, his unusually static head was rocked nearly off his shoulders as Mendy, a naturally stronger man with a reliable chin, walked through most of Campbell’s best work.
Campbell cannot manufacture a big punch from nothing, so he has to rely heavily on his normally tight defence and mastery of distance to stay out of trouble. But the sight of Mendy working him over in enough spurts to win more rounds than he was awarded did not send out the right messages.
He will come back from the setback, no doubt, but, at 28, he needs to make a move in higher circles pretty soon. If he has the inclination, he can work his way through this.
Earlier, the New Yorker Paulie Malignaggi created something of a first: winning the vacant EBU European Union welterweight belt (yes, there is such a thing) by outpointing Antonio Moscatiello over 12 rounds – then grabbing a Sky microphone to comment on the rest of the night’s entertainment. He might not be able to knock them out with his fists but the quick-talking American of Italian heritage certainly hits the mark with his words.
Dereck Chisora kept himself on the fringes of the heavyweight scene by stopping the little-known Jakov Gospic in the third of eight rounds. It was no more than a payday for both and a workout but the Londoner may yet insinuate himself into the Anthony Joshua scenario as a possible opponent in the early summer of 2016.
Gospic, a 33-year-old Croat who had lost 13 of his 29 bouts, all against little‑known fighters, provided Chisora with minimal resistance, and it was called off two minutes and 23 seconds into the third.
