There was disappointment at the weekend for Belfast super featherweight Ciaran McVarnock on the ‘Lights Out at the Plaza’ show in Marbella when he was held to a draw by Spaniard, José Acero.

After the bout, which saw the novice’s record move to 4(0)-0-1, ‘Bunty’ spoke to prolific YouTube channel iFilm London TV about the fight.

Understandably, McVarnock admitted that “I’m not too happy, I got a draw, I wanted the win,

While he was in no way complaining about the scorecards of what was a close fight, the Belfast man felt that “I won the fight tonight, I thought I won every round apart from the second where he hurt me real bad.”

On the dramatic second round, McVarnock gave credit to Acero, as “he hit me well, he rocked me, I was hurt, I heard people telling me to hold on but that’s not me – I’m a fighter, I wanted to fight!”

The 23 year did reveal that there was a range of factors that combined that left him below 100% on the night including that “this was the first time I fought outside of the UK, I took the fight at a weeks notice, and I lost about a stone in weight.”

However, the likeable Belfast man, reckons that there was one main reason why he didn’t get the win, conceding that “to be honest, no excuses, I just didn’t perform on the night.”

McVarnock also was apologetic to his trainer, Arnie Farrell, admitting that “I feel like I’ve let Arnie down.”

“Arnie is a real top top coach, he feels like it was a defeat too, he wanted me to win and he’s told me it’s not good enough.”

“I’ll be back in the gym on Monday, me and Arnie we’ll move on to the next one and we’ll just keep working and working and working.”

Despite the disappointment, McVarnock knows that this minor blip will probably benefit him in the long run, believing that “that’s boxing, I’ve got to learn from it, that’s the main thing.”

“I want hard fights, I want good fights, not knockovers. You don’t learn from easy fights, you learn from fights like tonight, hard fights.”

McVarnock has suffered a rather stop-start career thus far, however he now has upcoming fights pencilled for Wolverhampton on October 3rd, and Dublin on November 7th, and the youngster is excited looking ahead, explaining that “I’ve only had a few fights in 3 years since I turned pro, it’s not good for a boxer, but I’ve a great team behind me and now I’m going to start moving forward.”

Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@TheFIrish)