Dela Cruz Upsets Langham For Asia Pacific Title

On Friday 16th December, 2011 Jamie Myer Productions hosted a 4 fight pro and 3 amateur women’s bouts at Southport RSL on the Gold Coast to end out the year. The event was packed and well organized and had plenty of Rugby league royalty in Attendance.

The main event was for the IBO Asia Pacific Lightweight title over 10 rounds between Ryan Langham (15-2-0) and Philipino Joel Dela Cruz (16-12-2). Dela Cruz was a late replacement in this fight and from the opening bell he went to work on Langham with a point to prove that this was going to be no formality for the former Olympian, Langham.

Round 1 was a feel out round with Langham establishing distance behind his jab, while Dela cruz pressed forward cornering Langham and unloaded bombs from all angles. The fight was marred with some very deliberate fouls form the import without penalty over the next few rounds and at times centre ring looked like it was about to erupt into a street fight.

Rounds 6 and 7 proved to be the turning point in the fight and ultimately the end of Langham’s win streak, when he went down in round 6 twice and once in round 7 after being caught on the ropes several times. To his credit Langham fought smart over the last 3 as returned to his jab and moved freely around the ring, but De La Cruz had already established a big enough lead to receive the decision in a big upset on all 3 Judges cards 97-90, 95-94, 96-91.

Jones Outpoints Ciampa In Co-Feature Bout

The semi main event was between Tyrone Jones (6-1-0) and wiley veteran Frank Ciampa (10-17-0) at the 79 kg limit. Without doubt the fight of the night that saw plenty of support in attendance for the local boy Jones.

The parochial crowd came alive from the opening bell as Jones forced the action in his all action come forward approach, while Ciampa attempted to establish his game plan in the first. By round 2 the game plan went out the door when the left, right hook to the body an hook to the head from Jones landed at will on Ciampa.

Ciampa was forced into a brawl and for the next 5 rounds the crowd were stunned with punch’s that landed flush and seem to only spur on the iron chinned Ciampa as most were still wondering how Ciampa was taking that much punishment. At the end of the scheduled distance all 3 judges had it for Jones 60-54, 60-54 and 58-56.

On the undercard:

Rohan Murdock (4-1-0) is proving to be another young crowd pleasing Queensland up and comer as his team showed tremendous faith in matching him with very tough spoiler Joel Bourke (14-21-2).

All of Bouke’s fights are controversial to say the least and this fight was going to me no exception as he punched and headbutted Murdock well after the ref intervened to try and tidy the fight up, he was deducted a point in the second after several warnings. Murdock looked sensational with 3, 4 punch combanations that Bourke struggled in all 6 rounds to contend with as the fast and crisp punch’s of Murdock momentarily stunned and at times hurt Bourke consistently over the distance. It was a great performance by Murdock with plenty of support for the local boy.

Two debutants at Heavyweight started the pro night off with a TKO win to Jack Boote over Jacob Logan at 1:19 in round 3.

The event was well hosted and the atmosphere electric as the fairly large crowd left the night content that they watched a great night of boxing.

Posted in: Frank Ciampa,Jack Boote,Jacob Logan,Joel Bourke,Joel Dela Cruz,news,Rohan Murdock,Ryan Langham,Tyrone Jones