Agora Boxing

We'll be talking about this knockout around the end of the year when reviewing 2012 finalists, I expect -- light heavyweight Allan Green going to sleep Saturday off Mikkel Kessler's crunching left hook. Back in 2005, Green was the man delivering the Knockout of the Year, against Jaidon Codrington. It's a brutal fact of this sport that one can go rather quickly from being the one who can break an ass in two (more) halves to being the one with a quad-ass.

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Heavyweight David Price laid waste to another member of the fair-to-middling domestic guard at home in the Aintree Equestrian Centre on Saturday, flattening an overawed Sam Sexton umpteen times before finishing him with a splat in round 4. Merseyside’s first ever British heavyweight boss, Price marked himself out as a prospective world class player. In today’s moribund heavyweight division, that’s a rare distinction indeed – a sort of Bullingdon Club for well conditioned, oversized technicians.

Although Sexton, 228 ½, offered very little, other than a back-pedalling target, Price, 245 ½, looked a little less rigid yet more compact than in previous bouts. And while his left arm hangs limply by his beltline more often than it’s up where it should be, shielding his chin, his whiskers are unlikely to be troubled at this level.

After a demoralising opening quarter, Sexton found himself bundled to the mat with a cuffing right hook prior to the close of round 3. Oddly, the Norfolk man rose to applaud his assailant subserviently. Price had him whipped already; he merely needed to unleash his bread and butter punch.

Setting about his man with more devil in the 4th, Price stabbed Sexton with a sharp right that caused the visitor’s knees to tremble -- a follow-up right uppercut against the ropes dropped Sexton to his haunches. Once again, Sexton, 15-3 (6), clapped his gloves together in admiration -- maybe he’d heard a rumour the big Liverpudlian couldn’t handle praise, or maybe he just had a bus to catch? Unperturbed, Price shadowed his man, and a short right hook put Sexton flat onto his back, with referee Howard Foster (England) instantly calling time at 2:07.

With his size, conditioning and amateur pedigree, the only imponderable separating Price, 13-0 (11), from the upper echelons of the heavyweight heap is his reaction to being hit back. What might happen should that ever occur remains a mystery, so dominant has he been thus far in the pros. Should this popular and unassuming young man handle that part of the game as effortlessly as he has done his apprenticeship, then the world could indeed be his.

Promoter: Frank Maloney

Television: Sky Sports