O’Kane delighted after victory in brutal encounter

The local middleweight boxer defeated Welshman Kerry Hope - a former European Champion - on Saturday night to take the IBF intercontinental title home.

After a gruelling 12 rounds, Eamon ‘King Kane’ O’Kane had his hand raised in victory at Belfast’s Odyssey arena after the biggest fight of his professional career to date.

“It was a helter-skelter fight from start to finish,” he said. “I am happy with the win, I am happy with the scalp, happy with the new ranking and I am happy with a beautiful new belt.”

In a brutal, bloody and dramatic contest O’Kane’s performance in the earlier stages of the bout appeared to be beginning to take their toll on Kerry Hope by the seventh and eighth rounds. At that point in the fight, the vicious and hurtful blows to the body unloaded by O’Kane looked like they would become too much for Hope, who the local man admits fought a tactically astute fight.

By the end of the eighth round, the Welshman’s coach, the highly respected Gary Lockett, was telling the former European champion he was going to throw in the towel to protect his fighter from the devastating punishment being dished out by O’Kane at that point in the fight.

Hope seemed to be able to summon reserves of strength and courage to come back strong, however, and by the end of the bout both men were close to absolute exhaustion.

“I always like to finish a fight strongly”, Eamon told the Sentinel. “I wasn’t happy with the finish. It is the first time I have fought the full twelve rounds. I’ve fought ten rounds before but never the full 12, so that’s something I have that experience of now and something I can work on.

“I’m my own toughest critic,” he admitted. “I haven’t watched the tape yet. That’s something I will be doing - sitting down to watch the fight back and ask myself what I did wrong. I’m fairly sure I won some of those early rounds but I’ll have to ask myself ‘how well did I win them?’ I have to look at the fight honestly and ask myself what I need to do. I’m not that happy with myself to be honest.”

Asked if he knew just how much trouble Kerry Hope was in throughout the fight, he said: “It was round seven or eight. I threw everything at him. I probably broke his heart but I think he broke mine too because he was still standing there.”

All in all, while the Banagher man is not happy with his performance, the new IBF Inter-Continental Champion did confess that he was “delighted to take home a beautiful belt.”