Dunne’s First Defense Confirmed
RTE is reporting that Bernard Dunne (28-1) will face Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym (38-1) of Thailand in his first defense of his WBA super bantamweight title.
Dunne’s promoter Brian Peters won the rights to this fight back in July when it went to purse bids. It has just been a matter of awaiting confirmation of a date and venue. The title bout is now set for Dublin’s O2 arena on September 26th.
Dunne is coming off the back of his career best performance in which he won the WBA belt from Ricardo Cordoba back in March. It was a guaranteed contender for fight of the year.
Kratingdaenggym is his mandatory challenger, and looks like a very tough first defense. He’s the only other fighter to have beaten Cordoba, having won a split decision back in 2005. Most of his fights have been in Thailand, and thus I have only been able to see a very limited amount of footage of him. He’s really short for a super bantamweight, but very physically strong with good explosive power. He seems to favour fighting on the inside and looks to be a good body puncher. It should make for an interesting match up of styles with Dunne being more the slick boxer type.
