Eastern Counties title joy for Top Yard Boxing Club stars Arif and Jobe

​​The duo’s performances were the highlight of a strong couple of weeks for the Peterborough club.

Arif entered the Development championships for the first time at u46kgs. He was up against Sudbury ABC’s Benjamin Boldock, a fighter who has twice the experience of Arif. The first round was good one for Boldock who just shade it. After clear instructions from the corner, Arif was a lot livelier in the last two rounds, throwing a variety of mid to long range shots and putting his opponent on the back foot. It resulted in a deserving victory and saw him become the Eastern Counties champion.

He will now take on the Western Counties champion this Sunday. To keep Arif sharp for that bout, he travelled to Corby to take on Corby ABC’s James Carter.

Arif continued the levels of the previous week’s performance with relentless pressure throughout each round of the fight. Carter struggled with the pace and couldn’t keep Arif off him. In the end, Arif won by unanimous decision.

Myles Flaherty, a senior boxer at u83kgs, was also on the Corby show against home favourite, Barfour Kyei. Flaherty always brings a huge crowd to his fights and as this was the main event the whole place erupted with home and away fans cheering their fighter on.

It was a full three rounds of action from both fighters who were landing some big shots. Flaherty had to dig deep in the final round and the last minute of the fight was key to the final decision. It was the fight of the night and to Top Yard’s delight, Flaherty was declared the victor.

Senior boxer Jobe took on the The Wolves Den ABC boxer Marcus Abraham for the Eastern Counties u71kgs belt. The bout was predicted to be an action packed one, with Abraham keen to hold on to his belt. The first round started with Abraham coming out with full aggression and piling on the pressure. Jobe used his feet and movement well to navigate away from the pressure and landing many combinations to the body and head of his opponent. This was working as Jobe could see his opponent slowing down.

The second round saw both boxers catching each other with big shots which set up the final round to decide the winner. Jobe was instructed by the corner to keep close to his opponent and work continuously to the body and switching to the head with uppercuts and hooks. This worked very well for Jobe who got through with the cleaner shots in the final round. This was the final fight of the evening and the whole crowd stood up to cheer both fighters for a great fight, and it was Jobe who had his hand raised to win the Eastern Counties belt.

Top Yard have their home show on November 30, where we will be looking to hold 15 to 20 fights.