Elif Nur Turhan stops Shauna Brown in less than a minute

BELFAST – Eddie Hearn warned everyone the Istanbul’s Elif Nur Turhan would be coming to make an impression and she did precisely that when she whipped in a huge left hook to drop and stop Ireland’s now 5-1 (3 KOs) Shauna Browne after just 47 seconds of the first round.

Turhan, from Istanbul, is now 10-0 (6 KOs).

“For the last few years she’s messaged me was asking me for one chance, this is going to be one of the most exciting fighters in women’s boxing,” Hearn said. “She will become mandatory for Caroline Dubois… Remember the name. That was a very impressive performance.”

The International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Jane Couch texted BoxingScene afterwards to say: “That power, fair to play to her.” 

In a rematch from their draw in December 2023, Belfast junior featherweight Ruadhan Farrell concluded his rivalry with Gerard Hughes via a resounding win over eight rounds.

Farrell picked his shots well and Hughes’ face started to redden in the first, and he used his height and reach to dictate, and to frustrate Hughes in the second.

Hughes, from Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, was game but struggling to get a foothold – sometimes smothering his work and sometimes finding himself on the end of longer shots from his taller opponent. But, even in close, Farrell was proving to be more than a match for “Short Fuse”.

Hughes tried to work the body and he was applying pressure, but Farrell never looked unsettled, and when Hughes tried to goad him into a fight in the fifth, Farrell – 7-1-1 (2 KOS) – speared him with a jab.

Hughes kept coming. He flashed over a right in the sixth, connecting with the shot at the start and near the end of the session. 

Farrell asserted himself again in the seventh and caught the eye with a right of his own, and he was boxing nicely on his toes behind his jab.

Hughes bled from the nose, had swelling by his right eye, and soaked up more shots to the head and body but never looked like being stopped.

It was scored 79-73. Hughes moves to 5-1-1.

Middleweight hope Aaron Bowen made sure there was a buzz in the arena for the first bell at the SSE Arena in Belfast ahead of the main event between Lewis Crocker and Paddy Donovan.

Bowen started off aggressively against Juan Cruz Cacheiro, landing right hands and left hooks downstairs, but he didn’t rush his work. He didn’t need to. He was firmly in the ascendency and quickly gained the visitor’s respect.

The 26 year old, from Coventry in England, had the Argentinian bringing his elbows in to protect his sides and sent saliva flying from Cacheiro’s mouth with a right uppercut in the second. Bowen nodded to the resilience of his opponent when he crunched in another left hook to the body and a right up top.

Cacheiro, 7-4 (3 KOs), for his part, was game, but by the third it had become about survival and the sixth and final round seemed a long way off – even more so when Cacheiro spent a period of the session trapped in his corner and under fire.

Bowen pressed for a stoppage in the sixth and was putting more venom into his shots, forcing his opponent to back up, but Cacheiro absorbed the worst of it and rode out the pressure. Bowen improves to 5-0 (3 KOs), having won 60-54.

Belfast’s baby-faced junior featherweight Jack O’Neil started quickly and paid for some early pressure when he dropped his hands and swallowed a right hand from Mo Wako, who lives in York, England but was born in Ethiopia.

The Irishman was on top, switched southpaw on two occasions, and had his opponent looking uncomfortable on others. 

O’Neil was cut badly on his scalp in the second after Wako fell in behind a good right hand. Soon, the blood was splashing everywhere, and O’Neil’s body was drizzled.

While he didn’t panic, it was not a cut he would have wanted to fight on with for too long, so midway through the third he sent Wako sprawling from a right hand that landed behind Wako’s shoulder. It was a legitimate but rare kind of knockdown. 

Wako, however, survived, and inevitably O’Neil’s cut deteriorated and their exchanges became wilder. 

O’Neil, 4-0 (1 KO), spent a good portion of the fourth and final round boxing as a left-hander and Wako, 1-3, attempted to counter, but the well-supported O’Neil did enough to win 39-36.