It was an amazing night of fights at the packed out Octagon Centre this Thursday as Varsity returned with its highly anticipated boxing event which resulted in victory for the Hallam boxing team.
The sold out venue had an incredible atmosphere with vocal support for both teams cheering on their fighters.
Also present was British MMA pioneer and former pro boxer, meatball Molly McCann fresh off her spectacular UFC win.
University of Sheffield came into the event with a healthy lead in terms of the overall Varsity scores but this event has historically been very fruitful for Hallam, who was looking to recreate history with another dominating performance.
Although they remained victorious, the competition was fierce with the end result being Hallam winning eight bouts to University of Sheffield’s five.
This left the overall Varsity scores 27.5 to 9 in favour of the University of Sheffield.
The bouts were going almost tit for tat going into the tenth bout of the night but Hallam’s Louis Dereux and Oliver Hudson delivered in some incredibly tough back and forth rounds to secure the overall victory for Hallam.
The highlights of the night included three great finishes.
Conrad Zeuner-Griffiths of the University of Sheffield ended the second bout of the night via a round three TKO in a tough match up with Mohammed Hussain whose fast hands caused trouble in the first round.
Griffiths described the atmosphere and crowd as ‘unreal’ and said the experience was ‘amazing’.
University of Sheffield’s Esam Yahouni also scored a third round TKO after a dominant performance and later went on to win the boxer of the evening award.
He said: “I just had so much fun, the atmosphere was great and it was really satisfying to see all the hard work that I put in pay off.”
But Hallam’s Richard Naylor fast pace, conditioning and skill made for a dramatic finish to the night as he forced Adekunle Adeyose’ corner to throw in the towel for a Varsity first.
One of the best fights of the night belonged to Zak Abdulmajid of Sheffield Hallam and Ben Stanton from the University of Sheffield, who both displayed incredible skill, technique and athleticism over three rounds, with Abdulmajid taking the hard earned unanimous decision.