BOXING: Crawley youngsters shown the ropes at Bewbush Centre

The evening provided an opportunity for many of the youngest stars from the club to pit their wits against opponents from other clubs for the first time.

They will benefit hugely from the experience and will certainly go from strength to strength in years to come.

Crawley only produced two winners on the night as impressive junior Kristian Reders gained a unanimous decision from the judges against Felbridge’s Hamza Sherif.

Senior Sam Northcott gained a split decision to beat Hasnan Ahktar from the Fighting Fit club.

My other favourite fight to watch was between Crawley’s former 2015 National ABA heavyweight champion Ricardo Slue who was making his comeback against Basingstoke’s Bryce Goodrich.

Coached by Ahmed Miah, it was too much for Slue to win after such a long lay-off, but it gave the crowd a feast of quality entertainment.

Crawley Amateur Boxing Club chairman Rees Hopcraft was pleased with how the show went.

He said: “The results didn’t really go our way but the fact is we’ve put on an evening of boxing where pretty much exclusively the whole programme has been Crawley boxers.

“It’s good for them to be performing in front of their local crowd and it’s good for the people of Crawley. I was impressed.

“Kristian Reders did really well and you feel he really thought about what he was doing. He showed a knowledge beyond his years and outskilled his opponent, he worked out how to beat him and deserved to win.”

“A lot of the juniors were making their debuts, knowing what it feels like to go in that ring.

“That is a hurdle they’ve stepped over and will know how to deal with it next time.

“It’s local and it’s a bums-on-seats venue as opposed to a dinner venue. It’s good value for money and people get a good evening’s entertainment.

“The capacity here is 260 and it was pretty full.

“We have shows at our gym sometimes but that tends to be a bit small, so this is ideal.

“James Vertbeeten did very well and his opponent (Christian Crowley of Hove ABC) was very experienced.”

In other Crawley junior bouts, Sulman Mirza lost by a unanimous decision to Jadon Prior (Westside), Byron Jones lost to Avar Cubrevic (Westside), Alin Iacobin lost to Youssaf Shah (Fighting Fit), Issac Osterreicher lost to Singh Zurel (Tenderton), Amman Ali Khan lost to Luke Wadham, James King lost to J.Wood, Jay Watkins lost to Zac Hurry (Horsham) and Tommy Cash lost to Mason Barr (Copnor).

The other senior Crawley bouts results were: Calum Maccrossen lost to Tando Dwyer (unanimous), James Verbeeten lost to Christian Crowley (Hove) (unanimous).

Jake Clark (Goden Ring) won the Southern Counties lightweight title against Hove’s Keenan McFadden.