Big Stacks Defeats Jordan McCann at Newcastle Misfits Boxing

The right eye told the story. By the time the ringside doctor leaned through the ropes at Newcastle’s Misfits Boxing event on Saturday night, Jordan McCann’s eye had swollen almost entirely shut — the product of a sustained jab from Charlie Robert, the rapper and social media personality better known as Big Stacks, who had spent weeks loudly declaring himself the hardest man in the United Kingdom. Whether that claim holds up to scrutiny is a matter for another occasion. What is certain is that Robert made it count when it mattered, registering his first professional boxing win in a contest that had been arranged, in the manner these events typically are, to settle a very public personal dispute.

Big Stacks had entered the evening with a blemished record — a debut loss three months prior to Armz Korleone in a body-shot-only format — but a pre-fight altercation with McCann had generated sufficient online heat to construct Saturday’s main event around their rivalry. From the opening bell, Robert’s size advantage was apparent. His jab landed with regularity and began to close McCann’s eye progressively through the first round. When the referee paused the contest in the second to allow the doctor to assess the injury, the fight was waved off entirely, and Big Stacks was declared the winner by technical knockout.

The undercard offered its own range of outcomes, some more straightforward than others. Jade Jones, the double Olympic taekwondo champion who has been navigating an unlikely second career in the sport, claimed the Misfits super-middleweight title with a win over Sheena Bathory, who was retired by her corner after four of the five scheduled rounds. Jones has now won three times this year, and while the performance lacked elegance, it demonstrated the kind of physical authority that tends to paper over technical deficiencies at this level. Harley Benn’s evening, by contrast, was over almost before it began — Joe Laws headbutted him inside the first minute, the referee ruled the act deliberate, and Benn, brother of professional contender Conor Benn, was awarded the win by disqualification.

Elsewhere on the card, the results unfolded with varying degrees of drama. Jack Kay, competing under the name Ibiza Final Boss, survived a knockdown in the second round to claim a split-decision victory over late replacement Kellen Jenkins — a close enough fight that two of the three judges were required to separate them. Ashley Rak-Su, the X Factor winner, edged a technical and closely contested bout against Warren Spencer on a split decision, though Spencer’s supporters could argue with some justification that he controlled the majority of the rounds. Matty Scott was more emphatic, dominating Grant Mallinson across five rounds — including a first-round knockdown — to win the Gorilla Promotions prizefighter final and the £10,000 prize that accompanied it.

Wil Anderson, younger brother of England cricketer Elliot Anderson, stopped the experienced Luke Dyson in the fourth and final round after Dyson had been floored three times but refused, with some stubbornness, to stay down. Amelia Hewitt, fighting in front of a home crowd, stopped Kimbo Bimbo — a ring name, not a legal one — on her debut, in a contest whose competitive ceiling was limited from the outset by her opponent’s reported three weeks of preparation. The evening closed, as these events tend to, on the understanding that spectacle and sport occupy an uneasy but commercially durable proximity — and that for those involved, the distinction rarely matters as much as the result.