MIDDLEWEIGHT Kelvin Young reckons he silenced the doubters in his home town after seeing off Bobby Wood on points at MECA on Saturday.

The 23-year-old was a 40-36 victor against the Walsall southpaw, in what was his first Swindon-based bout since he suffered a first-round defeat to Paul Brown at the Oasis nearly a year ago.

It was an alarming loss that left Young convulsing on the canvas, and the boxer later revealed a three-day fast in the build-up to the fight had been a major mistake.

But since then, the ex-Penhill man has secured points victories over Tommy Marshall, Jon Harrison and Martin Robins with Saturday’s triumph at the ‘Swindon’s New Dawn’ show his sixth in seven pro outings.

“I wanted to come back to Swindon and stake a big claim,” said Young.

“Obviously I’ve got a good following anyway, but I wanted to go out there and prove all the doubters wrong, and I managed to show Swindon what I can do. I got my jab going well against an unorthodox (fighter), which is pretty tough as it is, and I out-boxed a boxer.

“I thought it was going to be a lot more awkward than it actually was, he didn’t fire a lot of shots, but because I kept my jab going, I occupied him and stopped him from countering my shots.

“I feel a lot improved and I wouldn’t change the loss I had for anything, I learnt from a lot of mistakes I made then.”

Elsewhere, Moroccan heavyweight Noureddine Meddoune made a winning start to his Horseshoe Gym tenure with an explosive TKO victory over Zimbabwe’s Birmingham-based brawler Hastings Rasani.

With a three-and-a-half stone weight advantage over his opponent, Meddoune unleashed a number of brutal combinations in the opening round and the fourth of these saw his opponent stopped just inside the two-minute mark.

“He was a good fighter, but I am better than him because I train six hours a day,” said Meddoune.

“I have high hopes now for the next fight.”

Meanwhile, Swindon-born super-featherweight Liam Richards became the British Masters champion courtesy of a 97-95 points victory over Walsall’s Steve Gethin, who he had beaten in two previous meetings.

“It feels good, although it wasn’t quite how I wanted to win it,” said Richards, who now hopes to contest a British title eliminator at featherweight level.

“He was closing all my work down so it wasn’t a clean fight, but I got the result that I wanted.”

Event promoter Keith Mayo said: “We had a good crowd that got behind the boxers and I think everyone was happy with what they saw, and hopefully they will come back next time.

“I was really impressed with Kelvin, when you look back a year ago he’s just got better and better.”