Anthony Joshua Won By Knockout Against Éric Molina In The Third Round

Anthony Joshua has extended his unbeaten professional boxing record by virtue of knockout over challenger Éric Molina in Manchester to retain his IBF heavyweight title.

The 27-year-old Watford born heavyweight had little work to do to win his 18th straight knockout against Texan Éric Molina.

Molina spent much of the match up on the ropes before Joshua knocked him out in the third.

Molina barely threw a punch in an underwhelming affair.

Credit: PA

Here are round by round accounts.

Round one: Few body shots in nice and early from Joshua. Molina offers nothing in this round. Molina spends most of the round by the ropes. Easy win for Joshua.

Round two: Again Molina is on the ropes and doing little. Joshua sizing up his opponent. Few jabs from him here and there.

Round three: Early initiative from Joshua, and then Molina is down. He has Molina on the floor, he gets up in time, but it's stopped just seconds later.

Joshua came into the match in high spirits and full of confidence, as shown by his tweet before the bout.

Earlier in the evening, the real fight of the night came courtesy of Dillian Whyte and Dereck Chisora, with Whyte shading the bout with a split decision.

In other fights, Callum Smith battered Luke Blackedge to retain his British super-middlewight title after catching him in the tenth round. Before then, Blackedge had restricted and frustrated Smith.

In an evening of numerous knockouts, Frank Buglioni also knocked out his opponent Hosea Burton in the 11th round to take the British light heavyweight accolade, while Conor Benn took just 66 seconds to floor Steve Backhouse for his sixth straight career win.

Luis Concepcion had a bad evening. He lost his title on the scales as the Panama fighter was too heavy for the WBA super-flyweight title and Brummie-born Khalid Yefai won on rounds to become the new world champion after agreeing to fight him.

Scott Quigg also defeated Mexican Jose Cayetano with a savage right hand to claim the WBA international featherweight title, while Irish competitor Katie Taylor comfortably beat Viviane Obenauf.

Main image credit: PA

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Topics: Anthony Joshua, Boxing, Fight, Manchester

James Dawson

James Dawson is a Journalist at LADbible. He has contributed articles to LADbible’s ‘Knowing Me, Knowing EU’ series on the EU referendum, the 'Electoral Dysfunction' series on the 2017 general election, the ‘U OK M8?’ series tackling mental health amongst young men, and for its ‘Climate Change’ initiative in partnership with National Geographic.

@thejaytoday