VITALI KLITSCHKO TKO end of 10 CRISTOBAL ARREOLA

Predictably, the gulf in class between Vitali Klitschko and Cristobal Arreola was too wide for the challenger to cross in Saturday’s heavyweight title fight on HBO. There wasn’t much suspense, and after a couple of rounds it was just a matter of how long Arreola would be able to last.

Although Arreola was tough and game, he simply couldn’t hit the towering Ukrainian — well, not nearly often enough to get into the fight. If Arreola wasn’t being kept on the end of Klitschko’s jab he was blundering in the wrong direction as the WBC champion deftly moved to the side.

I was relieved when Arreola’s corner pulled him out after the 10th round. Arreola hadn’t been down, but his nose was bleeding, his face was reddened and swelling, and he was taking too many punches for comfort.

After a big effort in the eighth, which he won on two judges’ cards, Arreola had nothing else to offer but heart and stubborn pride. I thought that he was looking tired in the ninth and 10th rounds, and Klitschko was, if anything, punching harder at this stage of the fight than he had been in the earlier rounds. Why send out Arreola for any more punishment?

Klitschko did what had been expected, hitting without being hit. Arreola’s only hope — a faint one — was that Klitschko might somehow be overcome by fatigue from all the punches he was landing. By the ninth it was obvious that this wouldn’t be happening, and in the meantime Arreola had been worn down by the steady stream of jabs and right hands to the head and, in the later rounds, some hefty right-hand whacks to the body.

If Klitschko-Arreola went as expected, I was surprised that Poonsawat was able to blast out Bernard Dunne in the third round of their 122-pound title fight in Dublin. Although I picked the Thai to win I expected a long, tough, competitive fight.

From what I could make out from the worldwide webcast of Irish broadcaster RTE, Dunne boxed beautifully for two rounds, but when he got caught in the third there was no coming back for the Irish boxer.

The picture was verging on the unwatchable as it frequently swam with psychedelic swirls of colour — every boxing fan in Thailand must have been logged on to RTE and I think the internet stream was simply overloaded — but there was no missing the Poonsawat left hook that caused the first of three knockdowns in the third. RTE analyst Dave McAuley, the former flyweight champion, didn’t see the punch, and was wondering: “What happened? Did he slip?” This was amusing, because the left hook was quite visible to me despite the disappointing viewing experience. Watching the replay, McAuley exclaimed: “There it is!”

Unfortunately for Irish boxing fans, Dunne didn’t see the punch, either.

It was clear from the way Dunne crumpled that there would be no repeat of his amazing recovery after going down twice against Ricardo Cordoba.

Irish ex-boxer Jim Rock observed in the RTE postmortem that while a strength-training regimen had no doubt made Dunne stronger physically it hadn’t enhanced his ability to take a punch on the chin.

Poonsawat has never been a one-punch type of hitter, and it was alarming to see the effect that his left hook had on Dunne. The punch that got Dunne into trouble was certainly a solid, compact hook but it didn’t look like a spectacular shot — but Dunne just “went”.

Dunne was game and showed a fighter’s instincts in the way he tried to rally when his senses had been scattered, but this was a devastating defeat. He came back from a shocking setback against Kiko Martinez, but it will be harder this time — two losses by knockout and a near-KO defeat in the last two years are worrying enough, but the way his body just seemed to fall apart from the first Poonsawat hook is what really concerns me: It was as if his punch-resistance has deserted him.