Tommy Philbin was beaming like a Cheshire cat when he paraded the Celtic super-middleweight title belt for the media after his big win over gutsy fellow-Scot Rhys Pagan at Meadowbank.
The Kirkliston-based fighter has received a massive boost from the ten-round win which moved his impressive record on to ten victories in a row.
Three of the successes have been via knockout and try as he did Philbin could not stop game Pagan who just kept on coming whatever the West Lothian-based fighter threw at him.
And it was one one-way traffic as Philbin admitted being rocked in the tenth round, right at the bell.
And he appeared to wobble in the seventh round of a gruelling contest in front of noisy fans in the main arena at the Edinburgh sports complex.
Philbin, whose longest fight before Friday was five rounds, said it felt great to win the belt and admitted it was a tough fight in which he made it hard for himself.
He added: “I got there. He’s a tough boy but this fight will stand me in good stead. I’ve only done five rounds before. He caught me in the tenth round right at the bell but, that’s boxing.”
Philbin agreed that he tried to stamp his authority on the bout at the start of every round and his opponent came on strongly at the end of the three minutes.
And the boxer added: “It was a good fight for the fans and they enjoyed it. It was a good atmosphere. I had a lot of family and friends in the crowd and there was a standing ovation. That shows they appreciated it.
“Now, I’m planning to make a defence of that and we’ll see where we go.
“This is belt No 2 and hopefully it will be belt No 3 soon. I’ll have a couple of days of the gym and then it’s back with Billy (Nelson, his coach) working to correct faults.”
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