Ormond rising from the Ashie
STEPHEN Ormond’s professional boxing career received a massive boost after he earned a hard-fought points win over Ghana’s WBO Africa Lightweight champion George Ashie in the Emirates Arena in Glasgow on Friday night.
The Clondalkin man found himself up against a fiercely strong opponent who had not tasted defeat since November of 2012 when he was beaten by Emmanuel Tagoe for the WBA International Lightweight strap.
Clondalkin man Stephen Ormond
Since then he had chalked up five victories, his most recent coming against Michael Mokoena in defence of his African Lightweight prize he won back in 2014.
Pleased with his pre-paration for this contest, Ormond was certainly put to the test by a fighter who, himself, has been eying up a world title shot.
And having come through this battle with the WBO Number 14, he is now looking to carve out a possible showdown with newly crowned WBO Lightweight champion Jose Pedraza.
The Puerto Rican beat holder Ray Beltran on Saturday night, and is now set to take on WBA champion Vasiliy Loma-chenko in Los Angeles at the start of December.
Still Ormond will not be wasting time in trying to secure another big fight and has already been back in training this week.
He is hoping to make a return to the ring within the next three months, if not for a title bout, then for one that will edge him closer to a crack at a world strap.
Certainly he will be well bolstered by this latest victory particularly with the tight defence he employed and which continuously frustrated Ashie.
That has been something he had been working on in his training camp, and Ormond will be very satisfied that all the work has paid off.
He is certainly working his way back up the world rankings after having suffered reversals against Craig Evans and Paul Hyland Junior last year.
He returned to winning ways against Nelson Altamirano back in June and this latest win over Ashie has seen him back in the conversation.
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