JOHANNESBURG – South Africa's Rowan Campbell showed his true potential when he retained the IBO All-Africa super middleweight title with a seventh-round TKO victory over the DRC's Patrick Mukala at Emperors Palace, Johannesburg, on Friday night.
Both fighters came out rather cautiously in the opening round as they sparred for openings but in rounds two and three Campbell (75.40kg) closed the gap and began to find openings as he shaded the rounds.
Mukala (76.20kg) had a better round-four as he caught the champion with some jolting uppercuts, but the superbly-conditioned Campbell kept pressing forward.
Campbell continued to apply the pressure in round five but there was a lot of mauling and holding in the sixth-round as Mukala began to tire.
It was a confident Campbell who came out for the seventh-round as he continued to attack and after a series of blows to the head and body referee Tony Nyangiwe who did a good job, stepped in to stop the fight off at 2min 42sec into the round.
Campbell improved his record to 11-0; 7 and Mukala’s record dropped to 11-2-1; 10
In the main supporting bout South Africa’s Rourke Knapp, 21, kept his unbeaten record with a unanimous 10-round point decision over Aleksandr Zhuravskiy, 34, from Kazakhstan.
Judges David van Nieuwenhuizen and Simon Mokadi scored it 97-93 and 96-94 and the third judge Namhla Tyaluba had it 98-92.
In a poor fight which looked more like a sparring session both fighters who had high percentage knockout records were not prepared to take a chance and open up.
Ricardo Malajika 5-0; 1 was just too fast and slick for Layton Gloss 5-3;3 as he won on a fifth-round technical knockout to take the vacant Gauteng junior bantamweight title. The time was 1min 33sec.
In the opening bout of the evening, junior-lightweight Cayden Truter won on points over four rounds against Lopez Maluleke. The scores were 39-37 and 40-36 twice.
Junior middleweight Darrin Rossouw who was making his pro debut stopped fellow debutant Ramsy Hlongwani in the fourth round. The time was 2min 59sec.
The tournament was presented by Rodney Berman of Golden Gloves Promotions.