(MAY 06) With a little more punching power, Viktoria Milo could do someone a real mischief. This evening, it took her far too long to work out Regina Halmich's complex and varied style, but once she did, she looked as good as, if not better than, her far more experienced opponent.

Showing tremendous courage, after taking something of a pasting in the first half of the fight (including a jarring overhand right in the fourth), the willowy, almost elfin, Hungarian came back strongly in the sixth and seventh, making quite a mess of Halmich's face in the process.

By the eighth, Milo had learned (at last!) how to use her superior reach to keep Halmich at bay and begun landing combinations of her own that left the German bleeding – at one stage quite freely – from a cut to the corner of her left eye and with a swelling under the right; but Halmich hung tough and managed to do enough in the later stages to hold on to her crown and chalk up her fiftieth career victory by the wide but – given that the Hungarian was getting stronger, and she herself fading, in the latter stages – misleading margin of 98–92, 99–92, 97–93.

Photo Slideshow of Halmich - Milo

Did Halmich win? According to the judges, yes. Did she 'show' Milo? Not really. In fact, not at all. I imagine Milo left the ring with even more confidence in her own ability than she entered it; and I can't help wondering whether, if they'd been fighting ten three minute rounds, or fifteen two minute rounds, the ultra–fit Hungarian might not have won.

Venue: Burg-Wächter-Castello, Dusseldorf (Germany).