The first of those featured the promising Swedish prospect Adrian Granat (3-0, 3) who was making his Germany debut. Unfortunately for fans wanting to really see how good Granat is his opponent, Aziz Baran (4-1, 3), was simply not up to the challenge and was stopped in 2 rounds.
Granat did what we expected though the show's other bout, which saw Christian Hammer (16-3, 10) out point Konstantin Airich (19-8-2, 15) failed to live up to our expectations. We had hoped these two would put on a good "second level" bout instead it became a bit of a standoff with both men looking tired and out of puff in the later rounds with rounds 8, 9 and 10 all becoming very dull. Whilst the later rounds were awful the early rounds also failed to all that memorable in one of the most disappointing bouts of the week
American fans may have seen some great Heavyweight bouts in recent weeks but this past Friday didn't see any, instead the Americans merely got mismatches.
The highest profile of these American mismatches saw former world champion Shannon Briggs (52-6-1-1, 46) fought for the first time in 42 months. Briggs made very light work of the limited Maurenzo Smith (12-9-3, 9). Whilst we under-stand Briggs not fighting someone dangerous he was fighting someone who had won just once in 2 years and was 1-6-1 entering the bout.
These mismatches also saw Antonio Mignella (2-0, 2) stop the debuting Justin Thornton (0-1) in the second round whilst the debuting Jonathon Guidry (1-0, 1) scored an opening round victory over the win-less Roosevelt Hudson (0-2). Whilst on paper it's hard to complain about these two it is disappointing that from 3 bouts we had a combined 4 rounds!
In Australia fans got the chance to see several debutants in action. In one of those bouts Adam Fitzsimmons (1-0) took a debut victory over fellow debutant Nick Browning (0-1) whilst in the other Joel Clifton (1-0, 1) defeated an injured Maunoa Temu (0-1) who suffered a shoulder injury in the opening round.