Johnny Garton stops Gary Corcoran to win British welterweight title

Despite a bad cut Johnny Garton stopped Gary Corcoran to win the British welterweight title

Johnny Garton claimed the coveted Lonsdale belt with an 11th round stoppage over Gary Corcoran in what was an incredible British battle.

‘The Pexican’ welterweight took on the ‘Hellraiser’ at the Brentwood Centre in Essex with the vacant British title at stake.

Garton, 31, added the Lonsdale belt to his IBF European crown, exclusively live on BT Sport, as part of the supporting cast to Anthony Yarde’s succesful bid to keep hold of his WBO Inter-Continental light-heavyweight title against Walter Gabriel Sequeira.

Corcoran, the former WBO world title challenger against Jeff Horn, was stopped after 42 seconds of the 11th round when referee Steve Gray stepped in to stop proceedings.

‘The Pexican’, trained by Alan Smith and Eddie Lam at the iBox Gym in London, won the belt that was recently relinquished by his gym-mate Bradley Skeete, after Corcoran was staggered by a series of onslaughts from the Millwall FC fan.

Meanwhile, Joe Mullender stopped Ben Capps in an affair that was far from one-sided. Mullender took on Manchester’s Capps, who suffered a broken jaw in the fight, at late notice and dropped him several times before the referee Kieran McCann called a halt to proceedings after one minute and 46 seconds of round seven of a scheduled 10.

And Zak Chelli got the bragging rights over Umar Sadiq. The pair, who had only had seven fights between them before their clash, wanted to put everything on the line over eight rounds. It was Chelli, a second-year business management student at Surrey University, who won by 77 points to 73 in an enthralling showdown in which the loser was knocked down.

Also on the card, James Branch Jr. won on points against Kent Kauppinen by a margin of 40 to 36 and Hamzah Sheeraz got a win over Zygimantas Butkevicius.