Frampton now has the world at his feet

One punch, that’s all it took, one punch so short and so sharp that many in the raucous partisan 4,000 crowd in Belfast’s fabulous Odyssey Arena missed it.

And yet a punch so powerful that it has turned two worlds upside down, the world of new European super-bantamweight champion Carl Frampton, whose star is now very much on the rise, and the world of the man he dethroned, Spain’s Kiki Martinez.

It came after two minutes and 46 seconds of round nine, a straight right hand from the increasingly dominant Frampton, and for the first time in his long professional career Martinez found himself on his back. To his credit — and his courage was never in doubt — Martinez got to his feet but he couldn’t beat the count, still staggering across the ring even as the ref reached ten.