Mississauga-trained boxers, Ajax headliners set themselves up for title shots with big wins Saturday

Considering five of the six boxers on the card at the Pickering Casino were looking to position themselves for future title shots, Saturday night was all right for fighting for all of them.

The two headliners – Brandon ‘Bad Boy’ Cook and Sukhdeep Singh Bhatti – had huge performances, with both Ajax boxers finishing their opponents in dramatic fashion. Cook, coming off a disappointing split decision victory his last time out – he’s had surgery since and is now 100 per cent healthy with “no excuses this time,” he said post-fight – stalked Mexico’s Luis Vidales for two rounds in their super welterweight bout before knocking him down twice in the third, forcing the referee to stop the fight at the end of the round.

Bhatti, now 17-0, had gone the distance in four of his previous five fights but was having none of that this time around, exploding at the bell and trapping Turkish middleweight champion Yaser Yuksel in the corner with a furious barrage in a bout that lasted all of 14 seconds – just one second longer than it took Connor McGregor to famously stop Jose Aldo at UFC 194 in Las Vegas in 2015.

Two Mississauga-trained boxers also had big nights, with Ricardo ‘Big 12’ Brown – a Jamaican heavyweight Olympian in Tokyo – moving to 10-0 with a first round stoppage of Josef Darmos of Hungary, while former Canadian amateur champion Melinda Watpool moved to 5-0 with a six-round unanimous decision win over overmatched but game Natasha Spence in their middleweight fight.

Spence, who took the fight on a week’s notice after Hungary’s Timea Nagy pulled out with an injury, fought for the WBO super welterweight title in 2017 so she is no slouch, but she was on the defensive all six rounds and took a great deal of punishment and was exhausted – but still on her feet – at the end.

“She’s a survivor for sure,” said Watpool, who trains at Dewith’s Boxing Studio on Dundas Street in Mississauga along with Brown.

For Watpool, 2024 is expected to be a big year, with likely an April date for her next fight. “I’d love to be in a title fight this time next year.”

Brown is in a similar position, though finding opponents who can last more three rounds with the big man has proven to be difficult for matchmakers. “They’re all good,” Brown said magnanimously of his ten professional dance partners – none of whom have lasted past the third. “I’m just stronger,” he added with a smile.

Unbeaten Mississauga-trained heavyweight Ricardo Brown

Kemahl Russel (16-1) of Jamaica also finished his opponent in short order, dropping Rafael Ortiz of Mexico in the second and then ending the bout by taunting Ortiz with an exaggerated wind-up and putting him on the canvas with a hard right 25 seconds into the third round.

Evan Gillard of Oshawa made it a perfect night for the local fighters in the opening bout with a split decision win over Sergio Rebolledo of Mexico in a flyweight bout, though with Rebolledo stalking Gillard (6-0-1) for most of the six rounds and knocking him down in the first the Oshawa fighter may have benefitted from a hometown decision.

Cook (26-2), however, wasn’t going to leave his destiny at the hands of the judges. Now 37 years old and five years removed from his world championship loss to still unbeaten Jamie Munguia – the co-main event with the hugely anticipated 2018 Canelo Alveraz-Gennady Golovkin 2 bout in Las Vegas – ‘Bad Boy’ knows this is his last shot to climb back to the mountain top.

Cook, as is his habit, thanked his coaching staff after the fight – “we had a good 15-week training camp” – and said he is hoping for “one more chance” for a world championship bout before he hangs up the gloves.

“We still have a chance for a title fight,” he told the media in the post-fight scrum. “Monday I go back to work.”