Gavin Gwynne defeats unbeaten Emiliano Marsili to win European lightweight championship after Italian withdraws injured

Gavin Gwynne defeated unbeaten 47-year-old Emiliano Marsili to claim the European Lightweight Championship at York Hall.

The Welshman, who was down on two scorecards before the bout was halted, took the crown as the Italian retired on the stool with a shoulder injury.

Gwynne, fighting for the first time since April, started the fight slowly, with the evergreen Marsili feinting and weaving in and out of range, dancing around the ring to ridicule his age.

Marsili was on his bike, fighting off the back foot against one of the biggest lightweights out there in Gwynne, who was five and a half inches the Italian’s physical superior, and it was the 33-year-old who was looking to use his height advantage to land the heavier shots.

“I just love a fight,” a relieved Gwynne told TNT Sports afterwards.

“They said try and box him, get behind the jab, nice and long, get it done first round. I just like entertaining the fans.

“I knew he was tricky and that he would try and outbox me, and turn around, being a tricky southpaw, and that’s what he was. You don’t go 42 unbeaten and not be half decent.

“The first couple of rounds I gave away, I’m always like that, just to suss him out. Then I thought I started coming back into it, started getting into my gameplan [as] he started to slow down.

“The last round we said that he was gone; his legs were gone. [If] we start to trade blows, that’s the end of him, then he pulled himself out with injury. I don’t think it was an injury.

“I just love to have a war. They don’t hurt me, these lightweights, when they punch me clean, they don’t hurt.

“I just want to keep progressing. I want to keep on improving, getting as many belts as possible and making as much money as possible, that’s the dream for any boxer.”

A short left after a neat slip of a right hook from Marsili rocked Gwynne towards the ropes in the highlight of the opening round, and the Italian kept moving in the second, easing off a big Gwynne right hand with 18 seconds to go, turning his opponent around as the bell rang.

Gwynne approached the third looking to close the angles, but he was met with the same old story: Marsili replying well off the back foot as he felt the ropes tickle his back, while a visibly frustrated Gwynne was failing to properly let his hands go.

The Italian veteran continued to outwork and outsmart Gwynne in the clinch and in the tight corridors, slipping sneaky uppercuts through the Gwynne guard as the Welshman insisted on leaning forwards, into his smaller opponent’s reach.

Greater forward pressure from the British champion had him breathing heavily on the stool at the end of the fifth, but he could sense the momentum was shifting against his crafty counterpart, who was still skipping around the ring, popping his jab and combinations before darting out again.

TNT Sports expert Carl Frampton labelled Gwynne’s tactics as reckless” at the start of the seventh, and the Welshman continued to be outsmarted by the wily Italian, who kept escaping off the ropes with clever movement, with Gwynne’s hesitance to truly commit to combinations proving his ultimate downfall.

But the eighth was a sign of the tide eventually turning, as the younger man began to show his quality. Getting on the front foot early, Gwynne landed a sharp right that rocked the head of Marsili, as if his power had finally generated to its full capacity. The Italian’s age was beginning to show, with his movement not quite as free as it once was, and his guard not quite as secure as in the earlier exchanges.

A big right from Gwynne with 30 seconds to go had the Italian backed up once more, but the evergreen former IBO champion elusively evaded the onslaught.

A surprise cheer went up around the arena as the referee shockingly waved the bout off just as the ninth was about to get underway, with Marsili retiring with a shoulder injury, despite being up on two of the judges’ scorecards.

It hands the Italian his first defeat in his 44 fights, and coronates Gwynne – somehow – as the European lightweight champion, becoming only the seventh British boxer to win at lightweight in 41 years.