Scott Quigg has retained the WBA super bantamweight title with a frustrating majority-decision draw against Cuban challenger Yoandris Salinas.
Two of the ringside judges at the O2 Arena scored the bout 114-114, although another had the Bury fighter, who was recently made paper champion, winning 115-113.
It looked even until around the eighth round, when the 24-year-old, trained by Joe Gallagher, began to take control, and he carried that momentum through to the 12th round.
However, despite his strong finish the end result takes Quigg's professional record to 26-0-2, although he feels that he has now earned the right to call himself the champion.
"I feel I won the fight," Quigg told Sky Sports News. "I feel I won it by a round or two rounds.
"I stuck to the gameplan for five or six rounds. We knew we were going to be sharp early on and I couldn't have gone how I did in the last five rounds like that from the start because I would have been picked off.
"I've just been in with a world class fighter. He had 300 odd amateur and I had 12. I belong at world level and I think I just proved that."
The other draw on his record was ruled a no-contest when Rendall Munroe suffered a deep cut in the third round of their fight last year.
Michael Penkman
