Demarcus ‘Chop Chop’ Corley is the Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum Contender Series Undisputed Welterweight Champion of Jamaica after he defeated Richard ‘Frog’ Holmes by a technical knockout (TKO) in the series final at the National Indoor Sports Centre on Saturday night.

When the end came in the seventh round, it was not a surprise to the thousands who flocked the venue to witness the carnage against the Team Caribbean number three seed by the Team USA number one seed.

They were in for a rude awakening, though, when the Jamaica glove man stepped forward with a big right to drop Corley to his knees for the first time in his long and illustrious career of 76 fights and 26 KOs — for the mandatory eight-count — with one of his blinding haymakers in the fifth-round.

After this, it was all Corley, as he switched gears. “It was a great fight tonight. ‘Frog’ was a very strong welterweight.”

He added: “I used my prodigious boxing skills to weather the storm when he landed a good shot I think it was in the fifth round. From then on, I started making moves, outboxing him and placing my shots.

“I thought he put up a hell of a fight and that was why I had to call on my superior boxing skill to weather the storm that was building,” Corley said. Corley also said that he will not accept another fight in the present Contender Series as “the guys are too big”.

Holmes was pleased with some aspects of his performance, but believed that the opening of the cut on the left eyebrow derailed any chance he had of winning the Contender title.

“This is one of my favourite shots. I spot the opening, threw the punch and it connected,” Holmes said of the knock-down effort in the fifth round.

“This is not a punch that I use frequently. The opportunity has to be the there for me to use it as it is a shot that I do not want any of my opponents to get accustomed to, so I use it sparingly. Apart from that, I felt quite good going into the fight and had the winning energy moving around in me as I had prospects of becoming the Contender champion. Unfortunately, though, he caught me over the eye down in the latter rounds and opened the cut I received a few weeks ago, and right away the blood started pouring into my eyes.

“It impaired my vision in such a way that I could not prepare early enough to weather the storm that was coming my way, so with a blurred vision from a foggy eye, I backed into the ropes to see whether I could clear the cobweb. While standing there, I could not see to defend myself and, before taking any further punishment, I just took a knee. Taking a knee at that time I thought was the best thing for me,” Holmes explained.

It was an epoch-making and portentous night at the venue that brought the Contender Series to a close with a highly entertaining evening of professional boxing, floor shows and an after show merriment.

The boxing element promised high entertainment, with 22 rounds of boxing and which commenced with an entertaining amateur bout in the light welterweight scale going three three-minute rounds between Shimon Day of Boys’ Town Gym and Samuel Grant of Sugar Knockout Gym that ended in a split decision, with the win going to Day.

Surprisingly, of the four fights on the card, the opening amateur fight was the only one to go the allotted rounds as the others either ended in TKOs or a KO.

In the opening professional fight going six rounds between former middleweight Contender champion Kemahl Russell and Guyanese boxer Denny Dalton, Russell stopped Dalton at 2 minutes 28 seconds of the third round.

This fight could have ended in the first round but the bell came to the rescue of Dalton, who was struggling on the ropes after being pelted for a few seconds. Dalton was no match for Russell but showed that he could take a punch, and with all the battering he was receiving, he could nail his opponent with that powerful right that he has. In the second round, Russell got a taste of it and from then on, moved out of tight spaces or in close range to his opponent’s right.

Meanwhile, it took only Michael ‘Sugar Ray’ Gardner a mere 15 seconds for him to stop Anson ‘Magic’ Green with a clobbering right to the temple. The second shot from a double attack to the head sent the Guyanese fighter crashing to the canvas.

He then laid motionless, robbed of his mental and physical powers, and was quickly taken out of the ring on a stretcher speechless, to be resuscitated by the ringside doctor and her team. Green later recovered.