KIERON Conway is the new Commonwealth middleweight champion after beating Ryan Kelly by split decision in Birmingham. The judges’ scorecards reflected the close nature of the contest. Lee Every saw it 116-112 to Conway, backed up by Kevin Parker, who went 115-113 in the Northampton man’s favour. Mark Lyson saw otherwise, awarding a 115-114 verdict to Kelly. It wasn’t enough to sway things in his direction.
The stakes were high for Conway as he stood in line for the winner of Brad Pauls versus Denzel Bentley which takes place next weekend.
Appearing a couple of weight classes apart, Conway set about using his clear size advantages against an opponent always primed for a fight. After three rounds, Kelly was closing the gap behind his forceful jab.
Conway upped the pace through the middle portion, looking to make the Birmingham man work harder. Conway’s uppercut was on point, but he left long stretches of the rounds open to interpretation as ‘Ruthless’ Ryan boxed clever.
Kelly tried to press forward, unloading his jab and right hand as Conway responded with body shots to weaken the smaller man. It was a closely contested scrap between a pair of solid domestic operators. Referee Victor Loughlin was mostly a bystander as Conway improved to 22-3-1 (6 KOs) and Kelly fell to 19-5-1 (8 KOs).
Earlier in the evening, Cameron Vuong successfully stepped up in class to beat Gavin Gwynne over 10 rounds. A few boos rang out as the scorecards were read out at 97-94 (Victor Loughlin), 96-95 (Lee Every) and 96-94 (Mark Lyson) all in favour of ‘The One’. Opening the televised portion, Hamza Uddin defeated Benn Norman 59-56 in a six-round flyweight fight.