Sol proved everyone wrong - McCracken
Dacres and McCracken after the big Wembley upset
NOW the dust has settled, the true enormity of Solomon Dacres’ victory over Ukrainian knockout artist Vladyslav Sirenko is beginning to soak in.
And – let’s be honest – it was a victory, on the huge Usyk-Dubois Wembley world title bill that probably only the Warley heavyweight and his trainer Max McCracken truly believed would happen.
Fight figures I spoke to didn’t give Dacres a prayer on Saturday night, the majority didn’t think he would get past the 10-rounder’s halfway mark. The “stats” suggested a slaughter, yet the predicted massacre became a Dacres masterclass.
Sirenko, ranked in the WBO world top 15, had won all 22 pro bouts, a staggering 19 inside distance. What’s more, he’d fought 125 times in a top-flight international amateur career.
Those figures fly in the face of post-fight claims Sirenko was hyped as a beast, but was not. As McCracken told me: “The pedigree was there.”
Dacres, the former English champ, was coming off a one round loss to David Adeleye – his first setback in 10 outings.
It appeared one-sided – and it was, but not in the way the bookies saw it.
Dacres boxed the ears off Sirenko, uncorking classy punches in bunches from first bell to last. By the end, the Kyiv KO king was simply trudging dejectedly into punishment, the landslide scores reflecting 31-year-old Dacres’ total dominance – 99-91, 98-92, 99-92.
McCracken could be forgiven for feeling a little smug.
“He has proved everyone wrong,” Max said. “They’d written him off because of the last one (the loss to Adeleye), you could see it at the show, they thought we were there for a pay-day. But (against Adeleye) he was caught on top of the head. It happens.
“Sirenko was strong and he could punch, we worked on just timing him. He was dangerous, you couldn’t switch off with him. I just said to Sol, ‘you have to be at your best and switched on and clear throughout. He got caught by two shots in the whole fight, really.
“Sirenko had won 22, 19 by knockout. I don’t think any of the others would’ve taken the fight.”
The performance says an awful lot about Dacres’ self-belief and mental strength. Only weeks before facing Sirenko, girlfriend Gemma gave birth to their daughter Alani. Such a happy event must’ve made it harder to focus on the fight ahead.
“The sleepless nights, the disrupted sleep, you know what it’s like,” said McCracken. “Sol was under a lot of pressure, but he handled it great. That’s the mark of a very good fighter.”
Fortunes change quickly and dramatically in boxing. Had Dacres lost a second fight on the spin, he would’ve faced a very long haul back.
Yet now, he can expect to be rewarded with a WBO world ranking and a mouth-watering match against one of the domestic scene’s best big men.
“It was a ‘must win’ fight,” McCracken admitted. “It would’ve been really hard to come back. Now he should be 14 or 13 in the world ranking. There is such a lot more to come from him, he’s ready for any of the heavyweights. We’d like the winner of Frazer Clarke and TKV (Jeamie Tshikeva), but we’ll take anyone who wants the British title.”
Dacres fought superbly on Saturday to register one of the season’s biggest upsets. He didn’t simply rescue his career, he took it to another level.