SAKIMA ‘Mr Smooth’ Mullings put the ‘Lights Out’ on Tsetsi Davis as he pummelled him into submission to bring the contest to a close in round seven going 10 to become the Wray & Nephew Contender Boxing series’ new Ultimate Welterweight Boxer by TKO at the National Indoor Sports Centre on Wednesday night.

Mullings, at the end of the bruising contest, was $2 million richer.

It was a result that Mullings had earlier predicted, and at the end of it, he quipped: “I came, I saw and I conquered.”

“If you could remember I told Jamaica that when I entered the Contender Boxing series this year it was for one purpose — and that was to win the Contender and I delivered successfully,” Mullings went on.

Asked what he thought of Davis’s handlers stepping this the ring to stop the fight before referee Jardine did, Mullings responded: “That was expected as Davis was not really defending himself well. He is a very strong and tough fighter and I must give him full credit for his competitive spirit, but from the third round or so onward his punches had begun to lose power and became less effective.”

“From then on I knew I was in control of the game and it was only a matter of time before it ended.”

So said, so done, and the end came at 2:59 minutes in the seventh round. With blood streaming down the face of Davis from his badly cut right eye, one of Davis’s handlers hurried into the ring to get between the fighters to protect a hapless Davis even before referee Ian Jardine could himself get across to intervene.

The agony of defeat in successive years at the penultimate stages of Contender Boxing series in two weight divisions has forced Davis by his own admission into not taking any further part in the Contender Boxing series. “I will continue my boxing career, but never in the Contender series,” Davis declared.

This should come as no surprise. Davis, after fighting gallantly against Devon Moncriffe in the middleweight division last year, lost when he thought he should have won. The same mistaken bug stung him again this year as, for some inexplicable reason, the luckless Davis took it upon himself to declare himself winner of this year’s welterweight stanza by turning his back on referee Jardine after connecting with a telling right cross to the left jaw of Mullings in round six.

The impact might have sent Mullings careening into the ropes, but referee Jardine immediately signalled it was not a knock-down and deemed it a slip by Mullings and sent Davis to a neutral corner.

But either by not seeing the referee’s no-knock-down signal or by shear naiveté, Davis went ahead and began to celebrate from an inconclusive act. This, therefore, meant that when Davis was ordered to resume fighting by the referee, who had completed his task of helping Mullings extricate himself from between the ropes, Davis appeared not to be in mental shape to resume the contest. He looked to have lost what was left of his competitive edge. He had already dropped his guard and apparently plunged himself into a celebratory mode after he had perniciously declared himself winner. That was a grievous error on the part of Davis and he paid the supreme price. In critical cases such as the case in question “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Let that be a lesson that Davis should learn from his ill advised act.

In an earlier six-round light middleweight professional bout between Jamaica’s Richard ‘Frog’ Holmes and Guyana’s Gladwin ‘Tiger’ Dorway, Holmes scored a fourth-round TKO over Dorway at 1:09 minutes of the round after putting the Guyanese on the floor for a count of eight.