On This Day: November 24th
2014: Katie Taylor stormed to her fifth and final World Championships gold in Jeju, South Korea.The first Women’s World Championships under the reintroduced 10:9 system, Taylor scored unanimous decision victories over Dominican Valerian Spicer and future Olympic defeater Mira Potkonen before receiving a walkover from Olympic final opponent Sofia Ochigava. In the semis the Wicklow woman stopped Chinese fighter Yin Junhua, and then overcame Azerbaihan’s Yana Alekseevna in the decider.
1992: Ballymena’s Eamon Loughran made a mockery of his pre-fight underdog tag to sensational stop champion Donovan Boucher to claim the Commonwealth welterweight title at the Doncaster Dome. Loughran hurt the Canadian-based Jamaican, who was making his sixth defence, in the opening round, before flooring him heavily in the third with a huge left hook. Boucher rose unsteadily and Loughran would knock him down, and out of the ring, again, before the referee stopped the champion standing. Loughran would defend the belt once before moving on to the WBO World title.
Watch Eamon Lougran v Donovan Boucher in full below:
1944: In their third fight, having won the first two non-title affairs, Listowel’s Spike McCormack forced a thirteenth round stoppage on Dubliner Jimmy Ingle due to cuts to win the vacant Irish middleweight title at the New Electric Cinema in Dublin. The pair would rematch and fight to a draw the following Summer before Ingle finally grabbed a win in a non-title bout in 1947.
