Beaudin Earns Split Decision Victory Over McLeod – by Rick McLean/photos by Troy Snow

(NOV 4)  On Saturday November 3rd, 2012, professional boxing returned to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, after a twenty five year hiatus thanks to promoter Syd Vanderpool and his Boxing By Syd Promotional team who held a four bout card at Bingeman’s Conference Centre.

The most exciting bout of the evening was fought at 115 pounds and saw Hamilton’s Amanda “Lionheart” Beaudin improve to 2-1, 1KO, as she defeated Hagersville’s Kara McLeod, now 3-2 by a four round split decision. The judge’s scored the bout 39-37 x 2 for Beaudin and 39-37 for McLeod.

McLeod had not fought in over two years but you could not tell as she came right after Beaudin. There was none stop action right from the opening bell as both ladies came out swinging and looked to make it a short night. The capacity crowd never stopped cheering and screaming throughout the entire fight. From the outset the southpaw McLeod used her height and jab to her advantage and pressured Beaudin backwards trying to trap her along the ropes and looked to pound away at her head and body which was definitely a smart game plan but it did not work out as well as planned. Instead of becoming overwhelmed Beaudin ducked low and bobbed her head side to side and became a very elusive target and avoided most on McLeod’s onslaughts. Then Beaudin would wait for her chance to counter punch and sprang up with shortened punches and hammered her way off of the ropes very effectively.

For example, in the second round Beaudin was pressured into the ropes but caught McLeod with four clean scoring punches to the head and the same thing happened in the third round when McLeod trapped Beaudin in the corner but she used her left hook and uppercut to battle her way out. In such a close fight it was examples like this that may have given Beaudin the edge on the judge’s scorecards.

When it came to fighting toe to toe in the centre of the ring Beaudin would duck low and come upwards at different angles and catch McLeod with hard hooks to the body and head. With that said McLeod was able to crack Beaudin with hard straight lefts and hooks that snapped her head back on several occasions. By the forth round of this war there was a small stream of blood from Beaudin’s nose as well as bruises and McLeod was breathing heavily from the mouth and had visible bruising and swelling under her eyes.

In the post fight interview both ladies felt that a rematch was in order as this fight was so close. Both fighters felt like they had won the fight and want another chance to prove it and leave no doubts in anybody’s minds. With the crowd’s reaction during the fight and the amount of exciting action that took place over the four rounds a rematch is definitely warranted and greatly anticipated!