A knockout night – Business Heavyweights report

GOOD causes were the big winner after a dramatic evening of big-hitting at The Business Heavyweights white collar boxing event.

Five hotly-contested bouts saw one draw, three points decisions and one technical knock-out.

The event, hosted by comedian Justin Moorhouse, began at a ferocious pace as Matt Currie from RBS and Deloitte’s Michael Hewitt traded blows from the bell.

After three very close two-minute rounds, judges scored a draw.

Perhaps the highest-level encounter of the evening came in the second bout as two North West chief executives, Chris Morris of Citation and Total Fitness boss Richard Millman took to the ring.

A real ding-dong battle began with a vicious onslaught by Millman in Round One. In a blistering salvo he caught Morris with a mightly punch, which knocked him off his feet.

Understandably shaken, he recovered amazingly well as he began to edge his way back into the fight.

Round One was unquestionably Millman’s, but Morris’ youth and extra height began to give him the advantage and he took Rounds Two and Three and was awarded the contest by the judges.

The third fight saw plucky Bob Nicholson of Cheshire construction company Pochin’s take on the man-mountain John Fowler.

Fowler, nicknamed The Freak, due to his giant scale – he is 6ft 9in and nearly 20-stone – was the only returning contestant from 2014.

Due to the size of Nicolson (6ft 2 in) and Fowler, it was no surprise that the pace of the contest was a little slower than the earlier fights. Nicolson did really well to land a few blows on Fowler, whose height and reach really made him the toughest opponent of the night.

Fowler was judged the winner at the end of Round Three, having dominated the later stages of the contest by landing a flurry of big punches.

Fight Four was the shortest contest of the evening as William & Glynn’s Richard Beard took on Simon Fagan from Atticus Law.

Fagan’s sheer ferocity and compact defence had Beard in trouble from the off, and he was knocked over in both Rounds One and Two, before champion professional boxer and referee Robin Reid stopped the fight just over half-way through Round Two.

The last fight of the night saw Altium’s Dominic Orsini take on MC2’s Byron Evans in a really excellent and close contest.

Both men had clearly trained hard, and entered the ring proudly modelling six-packs.  Orsini, slightly smaller and quicker than Evans, shaded each of the three rounds and was rightly judged the winner.

The brainchild of Steve O’Hare of private equity firm Equistone Europe in partnership with marketing agency boss Mike Perls of MC2, the second Business Heavyweights bash at the Midland Hotel in Manchester was attended by more than 500  people.

The evening raised more than £80,000 for the Factory Youth Zone in Manchester and Gorton Mount Primary School in East Manchester.