Troy Williamson set up for a defense of his British super welterweight title against Josh Kelly when he got six rounds off David Benitez, who was taken out by his corner in the sixth of eight super middleweight rounds in Bolton.
Argentina’s BenÃtez had been stopped by Aaron McKenna on a previous trip to the UK in June, while Williamson had not boxed since beating Mason Cartwright in March, when he had to get up to win, and had said he I wanted to take a few laps.
He found the perfect opponent for that in Benitez, who was willing, durable, but lacked the hand speed to really bother him. Williamson slowly outboxed him in the first three rounds and Benitez suffered a cut over his left eye, caused by a clash of heads.
The sight of the blood seemed to spur on Williamson, who landed a right hand in the fourth when Benitez was parried complaining to the referee about another clash of heads.
Things started to get unbalanced in the fifth and Benitez was on the floor, right to the body, a knockdown was counted though he appeared to be mostly pushed down. The Argentine actually fired back with an upper right hook, but it was a hit against many coming from the opposite direction.
There was a warning for a low blow for Benitez in the sixth round, but there was no escaping as Williamson picked up the pace, the towel coming from the Argentine corner at 2:46 after he came out of a clinch indicated he had had enough.
Kalle Sauerland, the promoter said the Williamson-Kelly fight would take place in Newcastle in December.
“It’s a massive fight,” Sauerland said. “It’s going to be one of the biggest shows in the Northeast in years,” Sauerland said.
Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was a boxing correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001 to 2019, covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights around the world. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications around the world since the 1980s.
