Sunday 13 December 2015 07:51, UK
Jim Watt says it its too early to panic even though Luke Campbell not only lost but made the same mistakes several times on the way to the points defeat at the hands of Yvan Mendy...
We all thought Luke Campbell was the golden boy and he could do everything, but he clearly can't.
But this is not a time to start panicking after his first professional loss. Of course, no fighter in the world wants to lose that '0' and this defeat will hurt, but now it is all about his heart and character.
We all have or had a fight when we suddenly realised a few things and I would be surprised if he didn't come back from this a better fighter.
I am sure losing to Yvan Mendy has just ruined his Christmas but you can't just point the finger and say we've got it all wrong about Campbell.
It's easier said than done and I am sure losing to Yvan Mendy has just ruined his Christmas but you can't just point the finger and say we've got it all wrong about Campbell.
First and foremost, Campbell lost to a decent fighter in the shape of Yvan Mendy. The way he just kept coming, chose his shots extremely well and looked like he could've boxed on for another 12 rounds. It was more a case of him being way better than we thought, than Campbell being much worse than we've been talking about.
I think we knew it was going to be a step up in class, but credit the Frenchman, none of us thought it was going to be such a big step up.
We have spent Luke's career so far talking about what he's good at, simply because he has dominated them, and didn't really look at what he wasn't very good at.
Mendy was a decent fighter but there were a few things we all saw. For instance, he just stayed in range after range after doing his work and I lost count of the amount of left hooks he got caught by. I was amazed.
He's tall for a lightweight so he's never going to be boxing out of a crouch but he has to be conscience that when he's moving away, he has to have his hands up and and be very, very sharp.
It sounds like small things that he might well have got away with in the start of his professional career but Mendy made him pay. At least he is young enough and fresh enough to learn from this and come again.
