‘For now it’s back to fixing cars’ – Alfredo Meli promises to bounce back

It’s back to garage for full time mechanic Alfredo Meli [17(5)-1(1)-1] this week, but the Belfast fighter has promised to do some performance fine tuning and comeback from his first career defeat.

‘Fredo’ was beaten for the first time in in Brentwood on Saturday, as Danny Dignum [13(7)-0] claimed a second Irish scalp to retain his WBO middleweight European ranking title and set up a British title shot in the process.

The English fighter followed up his stoppage win over Conrad Cummings by stopping the Mac Man in the ninth round.

The Belfast fighter was more than holding his own against the bigger man and possibly went into the second half of the bout ahead.

However, a sickening body shot in the seventh changed the course of the fight, the liver shot proving the beginning of the end for the fighters favourite.

So unassuming and quiet is Meli that it was hard to predict how he would react, but some suggested the middleweight, who missed the final press conference because he had to work, may hang them up.

That won’t prove to be the case. Meli confirmed he will fight on and will use Saturday as a learning tool moving forward.

“The better man won on the night. He caught me with that lovely body shot and I didn’t really totally recover from it. But I thought it was a good scrap and I will learn a lot from it. I’ll go away and think what I need to improve. For now it’s back to fixing cars,” said the Meli when speaking to the Belfast Telegraph.