Pat Brown rips the belts away with a body shot Hatton would have loved. On a charged night at Co-op Live, the 26-year-old Mancunian folded John Hedges in half in the sixth round to claim the vacant British and Commonwealth cruiserweight titles, then pointed straight to the memory of Ricky Hatton.
“I finished him with a body shot in memory of him,” Brown said, the emotion obvious. A year and five days on from Hatton’s death, one of his own gym fighters had just produced a finish straight from the Hitman playbook.
Brown solves the puzzle, then breaks Hedges
This wasn’t a simple hometown coronation. Hedges came in unbeaten in 12, a 6ft 6in southpaw who has made a career out of being awkward and elusive. For four rounds, he did exactly that.
Long arms, long legs, plenty of spoiling. He gave Brown almost nothing clean to aim at, smothered him when the Sale man got close and used every inch of his frame to drag the pace into something ugly. Each time Brown worked his way inside, Hedges grabbed, leaned, made it messy.
The frustration showed. Brown started to bully with his head, leaning on Hedges and forcing him back over the top rope. Referee Reece Carter stepped in, warning the local favourite as the contest threatened to slide into a wrestling match.
Then the fight changed.
In the fifth, Brown stopped loading up for a single, spectacular shot and started behaving like the Olympian he is. The jab came out, stiff and regular. The distance closed on his terms, not Hedges’. A right uppercut snapped Hedges’ head back, landing flush under the chin and drawing a roar from the travelling support from Sale, who had been chanting his name from the opening bell.
That was the crack in the armour. The sixth round smashed it wide open.
After spending five rounds aiming high, Brown suddenly went downstairs with bad intentions. A heavy hook to the ribs sent Hedges sinking to one knee, gasping for air and looking up at the count. He beat it, but his body had already told the truth.
Moments later, Brown dug in another vicious shot to the body. Hedges went down again and this time he stayed there, unable to beat the referee’s count. Unbeaten no more; 13 turned out to be the wrong number.
Brown, now 7-0 with seven stoppages, added the Lonsdale Belt to the WBA International and IBF Intercontinental titles already in his collection. Every win inside the distance, every step up taken with spite.
“I can’t just go bulldozing in with him, people think you can’t box,” he told DAZN, keen to underline the craft behind the brutality. “With John, you’re not going to get him out of there straight away because he’ll just make you miss and make you look silly. That’s why it was a patient performance.”
It was more than that. It was a statement that he can adapt, think and still finish like a puncher.
A night for Hatton’s legacy
The victory carried a deeper thread. Both men in the ring had ties to Ricky Hatton. Brown shares a gym with the former welterweight world champion, while Hatton once trained Hedges and guided him to the English title.
Their careers crossed under the same roof; on Saturday, their fight unfolded in the shadow of a man who defined body punching for a generation of British fans. Brown’s finish, sunk into the ribs and followed through with everything he had, felt like a deliberate echo.
The belts go home with him. So does the memory.
Masoud dominates, Jeffers and O’Regan move on
The undercard in Manchester delivered its own clear-cut results.
Shabaz Masoud barely gave Ckari Mansilla a moment’s encouragement, sweeping all 10 rounds on every card for a 100-90 shutout and collecting the WBA International and IBF Intercontinental featherweight titles. It was controlled, polished work – the kind of performance that nudges a fighter toward bigger names and less forgiving nights.
In a British super-middleweight eliminator, Mark Jeffers outpointed Kieron Conway to keep his domestic ambitions on track, while Cory O’Regan claimed the English lightweight title at Joe Howarth’s expense, another step on a ladder that always looks crowded at 135lbs.
‘Pitbull’ Cruz flattens Bravo and calls for Garcia
Across the Atlantic in San Diego, Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz kept his own momentum rolling and then turned his eyes to one of boxing’s biggest lightning rods.
Cruz stopped Nestor Bravo in the sixth round at Pechanga Arena to retain his WBC interim super-lightweight title for a second time, then went straight for the name he wants next.
“Hey, Ryan, I’m here,” he said in the ring. “My next fight for you. Come on, Ryan.”
Ryan Garcia, who blasted through Conor Benn in two rounds in Las Vegas last weekend to retain his WBC welterweight title, has been talking about a quick return – December or January – and had already floated Cruz as one of the men on his shortlist. Teofimo Lopez’s name is in that same conversation, complicating the picture, and there is the small matter of a weight-class gap: Garcia and Lopez hold belts at welterweight, Cruz is operating a division below.
For one night, that didn’t matter. Cruz boxed like a man intent on forcing the issue.
He started fast, catching Bravo with a hook in the first as the Puerto Rican tried to tie him up. Then the contest lurched into controversy.
Referee Thomas Taylor took a point from Bravo in the second for holding. In the third, after low blows from both fighters, he warned them again. By the fourth, his patience snapped: another point off Bravo for dumping Cruz to the canvas, with Taylor reportedly telling him a disqualification would leave him unpaid.
The tension around the officiating never really eased, but Cruz didn’t wait for the cards or the referee. In the sixth, he stepped in with a lead left hook that landed flush and sent Bravo to the floor. The fight was over. Bravo suffered just the second defeat of his career; Cruz moved to 29-3-2 and kept his leverage intact.
Garcia responded quickly, publicly acknowledging the callout.
“Pitbull proved me wrong tonight. Let’s do this in December, the offer is on the table,” he said, adding: “I can tame a lion, I’m not too concerned about taming a pitbull.”
On the same bill, Daniel Blancas, Marco Verde and Eumir Marcial all won inside the distance, each man nudging his own story forward on a night dominated by Cruz’s hook and Brown’s body shot.
Two different rings, two different continents, but the same question lingers: when punchers like this start calling out the biggest names, who really blinks first?
