World title must wait as Dunne eyes Spaniard
At the end of 12 gruelling rounds the three judges gave the verdict 118-111, 116-112 and 115-113 to Dunne who felt out of sorts before the fight.
“I had spaghetti bolognese and it just completely upset my stomach,” he said. “It kept repeating on me before the fight. It didn’t agree with me. It didn’t settle in my stomach, so I think we’re going off Italian food before a fight.”
The Norwegian was nursing a badly cut left eye from as early as the second round when a big right cross from Dunne opened up a nick which developed into a gash that bled profusely after a clash of heads in the seventh when, after two visits to the doctor in the neutral corner, it appeared as if Italian referee Luigi Muratore might be about to stop the contest.
The renowned London cutsman, Terry Steward, appealed to the referee to “give me just one more round” and patched up the damaged eye and keep Walsted in the fight. “Referees are likely to jump in when they see a cut of that magnitude,” said Steward. “I was confident I could deal with it.”
Afterwards the gash would require 10 stitches in the dressing room and both Dunne and Walstad were willing to share the blame.
“We did a lot of head butting, he butted me and I butted him,” Walstad said while Dunne blamed it on the Norwegian’s stature. “I think that upset both of us, because we were always clashing heads. We were getting up close and I was trying to throw body shots and he was too. That’s just a cause for disaster, and as you can see by Reidar’s pretty face, it did him no benefit at all.”
Walstad might have won the last round, insisting that, if it went to 15, he would have won the fight, but Dunne was happy with the way he carried himself through 12. “I felt a lot better doing the 12 the second time round than I did against Esham Pickering. I felt a lot stronger and I think I carried my power a lot more than I did in the latter rounds of the Pickering fight, so I’m definitely improving in doing the rounds.”
Walstad beat Dunne as an amateur, but he was never going to duplicate that result in the frenzied atmosphere at The Point on Saturday night although Dunne admitted he put it up to him.
“He gave me a very stiff test, in fairness, but I never expected anything else. You could see from the tapes that he’s an aggressive fighter. He’s built like a s**thouse. He’s well made, big chest, big legs, big shoulders, and you could see he’s in great condition; this was his chance to become European champion and you knew he was going to do his best to take it.”
Dunne was not as reliant on his trademark body shots as previously, but he put this down to the fact that Walstad was more difficult to hit.
“He was a lot harder to hit to the body, with him being smaller, and I felt that every time I tried, we just clashed heads. It was risky and it just wasn’t worth the chance of me getting a major cut on the head,” he said.
Professional boxing has been banned in Norway since 1981, so that Walstad has never boxed as a professional in his native country.
“Hopefully they will have seen some good boxing tonight and it will persuade them to change that,” he said. “I feel that if it had been 15 rounds tonight I would have won the fight. I think the crowd loved me. I think they came on my side after a while. I think I won the crowd over and I am happy with that. Too bad I did not manage to knock him over, but he is very quick and very difficult to catch and he is very quick when he gets close.”
Dunne now turns his attention to the mandatory title defence against unbeaten Spaniard Kiro Martinez insisting that he did not even enter his head until now. “He’s the guy who’s doing all the talking. He has a great record, but we’ll see how well he does when somebody starts hitting him back. It doesn’t bother me if I have to fight him in Spain. I’ll fight him anywhere.”
Promoter Brian Peters said the fight will probably go to purse bids and said it could go to Spain. With The Point unavailable for the foreseeable future, he said he would be turning to venues like the RDS, Millstreet or Belfast.
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