Galal Yafai wasted no time tonight against Tommy Frank, blitzing his opponent and scoring a first round stoppage in a Matchroom main event from Birmingham, England.
Yafai (5-0, 4 KO) was in his first professional main event, albeit on a smaller sort of show, and also fighting in his hometown for the first time as a pro. And while he’s always shown a real aggression since joining the paid ranks in early 2022, the former Olympic gold medalist just went right at Frank in this one, giving his opponent no time to breathe.
Frank (15-4-1, 3 KO) was down quickly, and the towel came in as Yafai was relentlessly attacking at 1:40 of round one. Frank may not be world class, but he is a former British flyweight champion, for whatever that’s worth, and he was competitive before being stopped in the 10th round last time out against Jay Harris, a former world title challenger.
Yafai, 30, seems dead set on making his way to the world stage as quickly as he can, and while there are obvious flaws — his aggression means he’s not so hard to hit — the guy is fun to watch, by far the most purely entertaining of the Fighting Yafais, and he does have skill backing up that attacking mindset — probably more than he’s really shown thus far.
Yafai vs Frank highlights
Undercard highlights and results
- Conah Walker RTD-8 Cyrus Pattinson (3:00): An upset and a war, one you might want to go back and watch if you missed it live. Pattinson (6-1, 4 KO) got dropped three times here, but just kept warring until his corner stopped it after the eighth round, which was probably the right call. He was still trying with everything he had, but the zip in his punches had gone and he just kept getting rocked by Walker (12-2-1, 4 KO). This pretty well demands a rematch if Pattinson wants it, and you’d expect he will.
- Solomon Dacres UD-10 Chris Thompson (98-92, 99-91, 99-91)
- Khaleel Majid PTS-8 Alessandro Fersula (78-73)
- Jordan Flynn D-8 Kane Baker (94-94): Didn’t get to see anything but the last 2.5 rounds or so of this fight because DAZN was having technical difficulties in the States, but what I saw was pretty fun. These two had a scrap in April where Baker upset Flynn, and after a fast start from Flynn, Baker got back into this, a point deduction kind of evened out an early knockdown, and now Flynn is 0-1-1 against Baker, and may have to try a third time. But he also may want to move on.