Kazakhstan’s 2014 Asian Games champion Anton Pinchuk and Germany’s David Graf went toe-to-toe in Dusseldorf on Saturday evening in the unprecedented APB heavyweight ranking curtain-raiser for the hotly anticipated bout between Tyson Fury and Wladimir Klitschko in the 50,000 spectators packed Esprit Arena.

Graf had won both his recent APB bouts over the summer and Pinchuk had gone 5-2 since October 2014 in the run-up to the match, and it was a suitably tight affair in the city’s Esprit Arena between two superb boxers.

With 50,000 spectators watching in the arena, former ASBC Asian Champion Pinchuk began at a more considered pace as he looked to conserve his energies for the latter stages of the eight-round contest, but he soon found his range and rhythm in the second round, delivering several powerful blows that the German could not reply to.

Graf then found some success with his left jab as he sought a route through his opponent’s solid defences and, having landed a typically incisive combination in the first minute of the fifth, looked to have the upper hand just after the halfway point, but Pinchuk rallied, finishing strongly to win 77:75 on all three judges’ scorecards and take the top position in the APB heavyweight rankings in front of a cheering crowd.

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