Boxer shows killer instinct

Press, 30 July 1986, Page 47

Boxer shows killer instinct

NZPA-Reuter Edinburgh The English welterweight, Darren Dyer, showed his killer instinct was as strong as ever when he pole-axed Darren Obah, of Australia, in a Commonwealth Games boxing quarter-final yesterday. Dyer produced the first knockout in 34 bouts at the Games when he sent Australia's Obah crashing to the canvas with a right uppercut late In the second round.

Obah had already taken two standing counts in the first as Dyer, the most exciting boxer on show in the event, threatened to take his opponent's head off with a series of crunching right hands. The end came just as Obah was thinking he might last the full nine minutes and the brave Australian admitted afterwards he never saw the punch. “I felt I might battle through to the end and I went for a left to the body. The next thing I knew I was flat on my back,” Obah said. “I wanted to get up but the referee looked down at me and said: 'Son, don’t get up, this boy’s too good for you’.” Dyer’s first-round opponent, Cliff Piper, of Wales, lasted less than one round and the English fighter said he could not remember his last fight which went the full three rounds. But he agreed that his next bout, a semi-final against Damien Denny, could well end that run. In the other semi-final New Zealand’s John Shaw, a slightly fortunate points victor against loane Tauvela, of Western Samoa, will meet James McAllister, who overcame a cut eyebrow to defeat Sterling Ebanks after the Cayman Islander survived two standing counts in the final round.