(NOV 4)
On Saturday November 3rd, 2012, professional boxing returned to
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, after a twenty five year hiatus
thanks to promoter Syd Vanderpool and his Boxing By Syd
Promotional team who held a four bout card at Bingeman’s
Conference Centre.
The most exciting bout of the evening was fought at 115 pounds
and saw Hamilton’s Amanda “Lionheart” Beaudin improve to 2-1,
1KO, as she defeated Hagersville’s Kara McLeod, now 3-2 by a
four round split decision. The judge’s scored the bout 39-37 x 2
for Beaudin and 39-37 for McLeod.
McLeod had not fought in over two years but you could not tell
as she came right after Beaudin. There was none stop action
right from the opening bell as both ladies came out swinging and
looked to make it a short night. The capacity crowd never
stopped cheering and screaming throughout the entire fight. From
the outset the southpaw McLeod used her height and jab to her
advantage and pressured Beaudin backwards trying to trap her
along the ropes and looked to pound away at her head and body
which was definitely a smart game plan but it did not work out
as well as planned. Instead of becoming overwhelmed Beaudin
ducked low and bobbed her head side to side and became a very
elusive target and avoided most on McLeod’s onslaughts. Then
Beaudin would wait for her chance to counter punch and sprang up
with shortened punches and hammered her way off of the ropes
very effectively.
For example, in the second round Beaudin was pressured into the
ropes but caught McLeod with four clean scoring punches to the
head and the same thing happened in the third round when McLeod
trapped Beaudin in the corner but she used her left hook and
uppercut to battle her way out. In such a close fight it was
examples like this that may have given Beaudin the edge on the
judge’s scorecards.
When it came to fighting toe to toe in the centre of the ring
Beaudin would duck low and come upwards at different angles and
catch McLeod with hard hooks to the body and head. With that
said McLeod was able to crack Beaudin with hard straight lefts
and hooks that snapped her head back on several occasions. By
the forth round of this war there was a small stream of blood
from Beaudin’s nose as well as bruises and McLeod was breathing
heavily from the mouth and had visible bruising and swelling
under her eyes.
In the post fight interview both ladies felt that a rematch was
in order as this fight was so close. Both fighters felt like
they had won the fight and want another chance to prove it and
leave no doubts in anybody’s minds. With the crowd’s reaction
during the fight and the amount of exciting action that took
place over the four rounds a rematch is definitely warranted and
greatly anticipated!
WBAN
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