Elton Dharry saw his chances of claiming the interim WBA super flyweight title disappear in Melbourne, Australia yesterday after the ringside doctor intervened.
Despite having the better of the opening rounds of his fight with Andrew Moloney, the fight, arguably the biggest draw on the undercard of ‘Code War’ was stopped in the ninth round.
According to footage seen by this newspaper, Dharry (24-6-1, 14 KO) had Moloney (21-0, 14 KO) in serious trouble in the fifth round, landing a beautiful right uppercut counter that stunned the 28-year-old Aussie.
In fact, Moloney’s right knee hit the canvas, and it should have been scored a knockdown, but it happened so quickly that it is likely that referee Ferlin Marsh did not see the knee touch down.
For the latter half of the fifth round, Moloney was reeling as Dharry, 33, looked to close the show and score the upset. But Moloney, whose legs were pretty well gone, managed to hold and hang on through the round.
Moloney however refocused and bounced back with a nice sixth round, where the tide seemingly turned.
In that sixth round, Dharry’s right eye began to close shut due largely to the effective jab of Moloney. By the end of the sixth, Dharry clearly could not see much of anything through that eye, but the officials appreciated his effort and gave him the chance to hang in there and fight back.
And he did fight back. Boxing through one eye, basically, Dharry kept landing shots, but Moloney was able to decisively take the eighth round, and at the start of the ninth, when the doctor took another look, the fight was reasonably stopped, awarding Moloney a TKO victory at 0:01 of round nine.
Although Dharry was clearly disappointed with the outcome, the condition his eye was in made it a relatively straightforward decision for the officials.
After the fight, he insisted to Stabroek Sport that he would have been willing to continue if there was not an intervention by the ringside doctor.
“If it was up to me I would have fought to the distance to show my boxing ability and win the title. The doctor stopped the fight on an eye injury when I was in control. The loss was the first for Dharry, who is from the 592 but lives in Brooklyn, in more than a decade.. “I’ll be back”, he vowed. (Emmerson Campbell)
