Champion retains WBO belt for the eighth time

Marco ‘Kapt’n’ Huck claimed his 25^th knockout victim in a messy bout with Rogelio Rossi at the Ludwigsburg Arena in Germany to retain his WBO cruiserweight championship.

The 26 year-old started slowly in the first as he felt out his opponent and after realising that the Argentinian wasn’t hurting him with some of his harder punches, stepped up his game and took full control from the second round.

The German took a low blow from a frustrated Rossi in the third, which he lost a point for, before retaliating with a flurry that resulted in the challenger touching the canvas, and although it did look like a push, referee Paul Thomas called it a knockdown.

At the end of the fourth, Huck hit Rossi a full two seconds after the bell, which left Rossi badly hurt and culminated in Huck being deducted two points and warned by Thomas of his future conduct in the fight.

In the fifth, with Rossi clearly still hurt by the punch after the bell, Huck scored another knockdown, this time clean with a huge hook that left Rossi looking like he wanted out of the fight.

The end came shortly into the sixth and after another knockdown, Rossi was cleared to fight on but ended up getting pummelled with a flush two-punch combination the left him out for the count, which the referee didn’t even bother to do.

The South American was down for a few minutes until he thankfully got to his feet but was clearly out of his depth against the tougher champion, who improved his record to 34-1.

On the undercard, unbeaten middleweight Dominik Britsch scored a majority points win over American Billy Lyell with the judges' scoring the bout 114-114, 117-112 and 116-113.