Boxing: Reid wins crown in bizarre bout

When it was finally over, it looked like an impossible task for the three men at ringside to separate the varied antics of both boxers.

During 12 rounds of often repetitive but always entertaining boxing, the task of finding a winner had been difficult from the opening round when Brian Magee was deducted a point for hitting and holding Robin Reid at the same time.

Magee was defending his International Boxing Organisation super-middleweight title in front of nearly 6000 of his local fans at the King's Hall, on the outskirts of Belfast, in a fight that was never, sadly, as good as expected, but in many ways provided several talking points before the final verdict was given to Reid.