PAT McCormack laid a heavy beating on fight veteran Robbie Davies Jr, dropping the 35-year-old three times on the way to a thudding sixth-round corner retirement as Davies’ team had seen enough.
An outstanding amateur but a novice as a pro, single-digit fights for McCormack meant he needed to soak up rounds off someone as experienced as Robbie Davies Jr. It didn’t need much soaking for the man Sunny Edwards reckons “could go at this pace all night”.
Davies Jr’s main objective was to ride out the early storm as sharper McCormack thumped in heavy right hands in the third. The big task got even bigger around the 1-30 mark of that same round when McCormack landed a straight right hand that left Davies Jr on his back, receiving a count from referee Marcus McDonnell.
Robbie was saved by the bell as a second knockdown occurred by the same method: a fast heavy right hand off a solid one-two combination. Davies’ head coach, Anthony Crolla, told his man to see out the first minute of the fourth round without stepping back tall.
“He’s ready to go,” Ben Davison told McCormack between rounds four and five. That call was correct as Davies Jr went down for a third time, this time during the fifth, as the same combination downed the veteran who really needed pulling out of the massacre.
Punch stats suggested in the sixth that McCormack had landed 52 power punches to Davies Jr’s five. Crolla made the correct choice, calling it off and retiring his fighter before the seventh could begin.
Pat won the British welterweight title eliminator, moving to 7-0 (5 KOs). Davies Jr has now been floored 11 times across his long 12-year career, watching the slate slide to 24-6 (15 KOs).