Southpaw Against Southpaw
Right then. An all-Irish fight of a different sort on the Croke Park main card: Limerick's Paddy Donovan against Belfast's Tyrone McKenna, two southpaws, one with everything to prove and one with 30-odd fights of experience and a chin that has been through the wars. It ended in the fourth with McKenna's right eye split open and the doctor shaking his head. Donovan moves to 16-2, McKenna falls to 25-7.
The Uppercut To The Body
The first round was a feel-out — two southpaws sizing up angles, neither committing. Then in the second Donovan landed a long lead right uppercut into McKenna's gut and the Belfast man went down on a delay, the way fighters do when the body shot lands properly and the brain takes a second to catch up with it. McKenna beat the count and made it out of the round, which tells you everything about his toughness, but the fight had changed. Make no mistake, that was the punch of the night at welterweight.
The Cut
In the fourth a hard left hand opened a cut over McKenna's right eye. The ringside physician had a look, and on his advice the referee stopped it. Some will call it early. I do not. McKenna had already been down, the cut was in the wrong place, and there was no version of the next six rounds where he was winning the fight. The doctor got it right.
Where Donovan Is Now
Let's not beat around the bush — Donovan needed this. Two defeats to Lewis Crocker, the first a disqualification and the second a decision in a world title fight, left a lot of people wondering whether he was the fighter his team always said he was. On this evidence he still is. He was fast, he was accurate, and the body attack was nasty. That is a fighter who has been to a dark place and come back better.
Luke's Verdict
A European title or a big domestic name at 147 is the right next move — not another world title shot straight away, but a proper fight that keeps him busy and ranked. I back him to win it. As for McKenna, at 25-7 with the losses now stacking up against the top domestic names, the Belfast man has given the sport a career of entertainment and nobody will think less of him if this is the moment he steps away. Class, both of them. The rest of the Croke Park card, including Katie Taylor's undisputed farewell, is on our news page.