Josh Kelly Upsets Bakhram Murtazaliev for IBF Title

The noise inside the Utilita Arena Newcastle had the crackle of a crowd that fancied a bit of history, and they got it, though not quite in the neat, pre-fight way the betting men prefer. Josh Kelly boxed his way to the biggest night of his career, taking the IBF super-welterweight title from Bakhram Murtazaliev by majority decision after twelve tight, tense rounds.

This was supposed to be the hard-hitting champion’s sort of evening, a compact, purposeful puncher against a challenger whose gifts can look like showmanship until you try laying a glove on him. Kelly, though, came out with his head screwed on and his feet set to perpetual motion, nicking early rounds with speed, touch-and-move discipline and just enough spite in the counters to keep Murtazaliev honest. The champion stalked, edged forward and looked to shorten the ring, but for long spells he was chasing a silhouette rather than a target.

The first proper jolt came in the fourth, when Kelly’s sharp work finally landed with punctuation, and the champion found himself on the canvas from a flash knockdown. It wasn’t the sort of fall that rewrites a fight on its own, but it mattered because it confirmed the pattern: Kelly was seeing things early, and Murtazaliev was having to earn every inch after a long spell out of the ring. The crowd roared as if they’d tugged the belt themselves, and for a few rounds after that, Kelly boxed like a man who believed them.

Murtazaliev did what champions are supposed to do when the script goes smudged: he kept walking forward, kept his posture, and gradually made it more of a fight than a display. The middle rounds were heavy with pressure, the kind that doesn’t always look dramatic in real time but leaves you with a choice: run and surrender ground, or stand and pay. Kelly tried to do both in small doses, circling when he could, tying up when he had to, and stealing moments with quick hands before disappearing again. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was usually effective, and the tension came from knowing that one clean shot could turn all that cleverness into panic.

That clean shot arrived in the ninth. Murtazaliev, finally close enough to punch without overreaching, dropped Kelly with a heavy left hand that changed the temperature in the building. Old questions about Kelly’s stamina and resolve, asked loudly in past fights, were suddenly back on the table. He got up, legs not entirely trustworthy, and spent the next round boxing out of necessity rather than swagger, moving because standing still would have been an act of charity. The champion pressed hard, sensing the belt slipping back toward his waist. Still, Kelly survived the crisis and, crucially, regained enough composure to make the last stretch a boxing match again rather than a rescue mission.

The championship rounds were precisely the sort you expect when both men know the margins are thin. Murtazaliev carried urgency, dangerous every time he could set his feet, while Kelly, bruised but unbroken, fought in bursts and made sure his work was visible. There was still showmanship in him, even after being dumped on the floor, but it was tempered now, less about posing and more about persuading three people with pens. In the twelfth, he finished strongly enough to leave the impression of a challenger who’d come to win, not merely to survive a brave defeat.

When the scores were read, they told you just how awkward the fight was to judge in patches, and how costly those two knockdowns proved. One judge had it 113-113, while the other two scored it for Kelly 114-113 and 115-111, giving him the majority decision and the title. Murtazaliev suffered his first professional defeat and surrendered a belt he had won against Jack Culcay and defended against Tim Tszyu. At the same time, Kelly became Britain’s newest world champion and, as the night in the North East insisted on reminding you, the first from Sunderland to do it.

There will be talk now, of course there will, about where Kelly goes with the belt and who fancies taking it off him. Murtazaliev will rue the slow start and that fourth-round trip, Kelly will remember the ninth and the way he had to think his way out of trouble, and the division has a new champion who has proved, at the very least, that clever boxing still has a place when the punches start to matter.