On January 20, Mikaela Mayer and Natasha Jonas competed in the main event in Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena, while Karriss Artingstall faced Lilia dos Santos Furtado on the undercard.
In a back-and-forth featherweight bout, Karriss Artingstall (6-0, 1 KO) defeated Lila dos Santos Furtado (9-2, 1 KO) in eight rounds.
Furtado had previously suffered a loss against Artingstall’s British opponent Raven Chapman, but had demonstrated her resilience by persevering through the fight with her.
Glancing past Furtado, Artingstall held her off with her outstretched hands. Although Furtado was the more aggressive fighter, she had trouble at range. Artingstall opened the match with control. She detected a Furtado attack as the bell rang, so she took a slight step back to make her fall short again, and attacked her badly with a razor-sharp southpaw left hand.
Furtado saw that her greatest line of defense was to attack, and that by forcing Artingstall back, she was removing one of the taller fighter’s main tools. Artingstall appeared a little uneasy under pressure after accelerating through the opening two rounds, and her punch output sharply decreased.
In the fifth round, Artingstall traded blows with the opponent rather than trying to create some distance between them. Artingstall may have won the round by landing some cleaner punches, but by fighting close to the opponent, she was giving up her advantages and strength.
In the sixth, Artingstall rectified that by being the first to land clean blows and holding Furtado at arm’s length. Following a fast start to the round, Furtado found it difficult to finish her own work, with blood streaming from her nose.
Throughout the last round of, Furtado pushed the tempo, knowing she would likely need something exceptional to obtain any kind of result, but she fell up short.
John Latham, the scoring referee, gave Artingstall, who is still unbeaten, the victory in the eighth round, 77-75.
“I just didn’t adapt to it very well. I kind of fought fire with fire sometimes, because when I was boxing how I box, I was catching her with the cleaner shots,” said Artingstall in media reports.
“I had a little bit of a tear-up every now and then, which I probably shouldn’t have, but I got the win so I can’t dwell on it too much, and move on to the next one,” she added.
