CORY SPINKS W12 (split) DeANDRE LATIMORE

The importance of championship experience was illustrated in Cory Spinks’s close, hard-earned victory over DeAndre Latimore on Friday night.

In a tough, gruelling fight, Spinks knew how to win, Latimore didn’t.

Whereas Latimore faltered, winging and missing as confusion and fatigue set in, Spinks stayed steady, picked his punches and clearly won the all-important last round to snatch the split decision and with it the vacant IBF junior middleweight title.

The ShoBox main event was an engrossing struggle between two southpaws meeting in a St. Louis showdown, with Spinks the veteran ex-champ taking on a strong, heavy-handed but largely untested fighter who saw himself as the new kid on the block.

Latimore’s fast start gave his supporters hope, with Spinks stunned by a left hand and going down in the opening round.

As early as round three, however, I thought that Spinks was turning things in his favour.

Spinks, 31, showed something that we sometimes overlook, which is that he is a real fighter. Although considered a slick, hit-and-move boxer, he can, when necessary, stay inside and dig in his punches — as he reminded us in the post-fight interview.

Nick Charles noted admiringly in the commentary that Spinks can “flat out fight”, while quite early in the contest Steve Farhood observed with a trace of surprise in his voice: “If you didn’t know, you’d think Spinks was the puncher in this fight.”

The way Spinks was able to duck and roll under punches was highly impressive. Latimore was putting a lot into his big left hands and right hooks, and all those wild misses must have been tiring, not to mention discouraging.

Even though Spinks was cut over the left eye in the fifth he was gritting out the rounds and the crowd, initially cool towards him, encouraged the older man’s surge with a chant of “Cory, Cory.”

Latimore, cut over the left eye himself in the ninth round, showed guts in mounting a rally. With Spinks feeling the pace, Latimore kept punching and on my card had pulled himself level after 11 rounds.

The last round was all-important, and it was Spinks who won it with a fine display of heart, determination and old-pro fighting ability, dominating the round while Latimore, the younger man by eight years, disappointingly could only push out his hands in a weary way, worn down physically and mentally.

Spinks’s legs might not be what they were, but his seasoning, skill and a real fighting spirit got him through against a far less experienced man who seemed to have lost his way by the middle rounds and never really found it again.