Ben Whittaker earns stunning stoppage on USA debut
It was a good night for the Darlaston fighter.
Black Country boxing sensation Ben Whittaker’s stunning second round stoppage gave him the perfect debut in the United States.
The Darlaston star produced an impressive display against Richard Rivera at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, as he attempts to make his name across the pond.
The 29-year-old dropped the American at the end of the first hand with a powerful right hand before catching him with a clinical left hand at the start of the second.
Rivera staggered to his feet and looked dazed before the referee called a stop to the fight, earning Whittaker the WBC Silver Light Heavyweight title.
The victory improved Whittaker’s record to 12 wins and one draw from his 13 professional fights as he inflicted the third defeat of Rivera’s 30-fight career.
"Brooklyn, that's how you do it man," Whittaker said.
“I hit him, and he went to sleep. When you hit them like that, that’s all she wrote.”
Whittaker’s promoter Eddie Hearn is now preparing the fighter’s path to a world title shot.
Dmitry Bivol holds the WBA, WBO and IFB titles in Whittaker’s division, while David Benavidez is the WBC champion.
"The next fight will be another step up like tonight was," Hearn said.
“To be honest, we have to start positioning ourselves for a world title. So we need a big domestic name or a fight that’s going to get him mandatory— a final eliminator.
“At the end of the day, you can’t go from Rivera to Bivol, Benavidez and (Artur) Beterbiev. There are two or three more in between Rivera and those guys.
"We have to go through the levels and understand that (Whittaker’s) still relatively inexperienced in the professional code. That was his first completed round tonight in a year and three fights.
“He’s still the highest-paid fighter per round on the planet, which is good!
"I don’t think it would be wise to go from Rivera to Beterbiev and those kinds of guys; you’ve got to fight through the levels, and he's, as you’ve seen, demolishing these levels.”
The fight was on the undercard of the clash between Zander Zayas and Jaron Ennis, as the latter produced a seventh-round stoppage to take the WBA and WBO super-welterweight titles, following three knock downs.
It was Zayas’ first defeat from 24 fights, while Ennis has an undefeated record from his 36 bouts.
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