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In an important fight at lightweight, with both boxers battling to stay in contention, Liam Wilson, improving to 14-3 (8 KOs), scored a crowd-pleasing stoppage of Youssef Dib, 21-2 (11 KOs), brother of the former IBF champion Billy Dib, at the WIN Entertainment Center in Wollongong.
Former world-title challenger Wilson, who lost to Oscar Valdez in the US earlier in 2024, was on the front foot early on, becoming busy behind his jab, and trying to find openings to the head and body. Wilson was in control of the space and distance and boxing aggressively, but he took a flash right hand near the close of the second round.
There was greater variety to Wilson’s work near the end of the third, when he landed a right uppercut and then a left hook to the body, but Dib was still catching him with occasional rights.
The action started to open up in the fifth. Wilson became a more stationary target and bled from the nose because he stayed inside too long without moving his head, but Dib was also bleeding. Wilson was able to land shots through the pressure and attrition he always enjoys bringing, and there was further good action in the next, with both throwing fiery combinations and both scoring regularly.
They slugged away in the seventh, too. Dib was not using the ring as much and was more prepared to trade, but he also attempted to hold a couple of times, and Wilson either tried to push him away or target him on the inside. Dib scored with a good right hand to round off the seventh, but the momentum had not fully turned.
As the eighth of the scheduled 10 rounds opened, Wilson tumbled to the deck in what was ruled a slip, but moments after restarting he hurt Dib with a crunching left hook. Dib flew back into the ropes, his right hand trapped between the strands, and Wilson cracked him with another left hook, shutting Dib’s lights off. As the Sydney native slid to the canvas, Wilson lashed in a couple more shots. Dib, emphatically, was down and out; Wilson celebrated by calling out George Kambosos Jr.
It by then had taken Mounir Fathi barely two minutes to stop Anton Markovic.
Markovic was dropped twice, once by a thunderous right hand, and although he made it back to his feet, Fathi flew in, throwing both hands and forcing the referee’s timely intervention.
Fathi, a Moroccan who lives in Australia, improves to 7-1 (7 KOs), and the junior middleweight Markovic, from Sydney, drops to 5-2 (2 KOs). The time of the stoppage was 2:11.