Michael Conlan extended the undefeated start to his professional career last night to win the WBO international super-bantamweight title, although he didn't have it all his own way against Romanian fighter Ionut Baluta in London.
Despite entering the bout as a strong favourite the Belfast native would require a majority points win. Two of the judges scored the fight 117-112 and 115-114 in favour of Conlan, while the third marked the fight as a draw.
That surprised the Irishman, who felt that he had clearly one the fight even if Baluta had offered up a sterner test than he had anticipated.
Speaking to SecondsOut, he said that he wasn't sure how the judges marked the fight so tightly. Conlan said he is also looking forward to using last night's experience as a final building block towards a potential world title fight later in the year.
I'm looking forward to that, that's what I want, that's my aim. If I’m honest I need to be much better than that to win the world title.
So I have got to go in and review everything that I done and work on it really really hard to make it better and make it perfect...
Very shocked, very shocked (about the scorecard).
Thank God I didn’t low blow anyone tonight. The last time I did that I got two points taken off me. Thank God I didn’t do that because I would have lost!
I was blown away by the scores, it is what it is. You can’t really score punches that you are missing but it seemed to happen.
I am happy I got the win so the scores at the end of the day are irrelevant as long as I win.
Conlan is well on course to fight for a world title at some point before the end of 2021, with the 29-year old eyeing a clash with WBO champion Stephen Fulton.
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