Dunne awaits results

BOXING: In the week Wayne McCullough steps into the ring in his native Belfast for the first time since December 1995, following a long-running dispute with the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC), 22-year-old featherweight Bernard Dunne should find out today the results of neurological tests conducted last week in Los Angeles.

Dunne was not passed fit to fight 10 days ago when the New York State Athletic Commission decided against sanctioning his third professional bout against Tony Spinoza when a "spot" was located on a pre-fight brain scan.

Trained by Freddie Roach and recently signed with Sugar Ray Leonard Productions, the fighter is regarded as one of the brightest talents to emerge from the Irish amateur ranks for some years.

The Dubliner finds himself in the same position as McCullough did two years ago when he was forced to pull out of a scheduled fight against Hungarian Sandor Koszics following a head scan. It took until a few months ago for McCullough and a number specialist neurologists to convince the BBBC that a licence to fight should be granted.

The scare which kept McCullough from the ring for two years transpired to be a small cyst near the brain that could have been there before he began boxing.

Dunne, who was supposed to have met Spinoza in the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York, on October 18th, was initially given a clean bill of health for the bout before a second opinion from a New York State Athletic Commission doctor scuppered any hopes of a third professional win. He convincingly beat Rodrigo Ortiz in two rounds in December 2001 and Christian Cabrerra with a second-round technical knockout in August and was expected to add Spinoza's scalp to the list.

In a further ironic twist Dunne sparred with McCullough when the younger fighter, then 15, was making his way as a highly successful amateur. Last year the career of Kildare heavyweight Cathal O'Grady was ended in similar circumstances when a pre-fight neurological scan also revealed complications.

"It will probably be tomorrow (Wednesday) before we know anything concrete," said Dunne's father Brendan, a former Irish Olympic boxer. "He went to see the top doctor in UCLA (University of California Los Angeles). We are all hopeful and confident that it will be good news but really there has been no speculation since the cancelled Buffalo fight."

Meanwhile 32-year-old McCullough hopes that no such similar shocks will mar his return to Belfast where he and Russian opponent Nikolai Eremeev will weigh in at the Europa Hotel on Friday before their scheduled 10-round international featherweight contest on Saturday night at the Maysfield Sports Centre.

Providing McCullough comes through this fight he will be looking to challenge Glasgow's newly-crowned WBO world featherweight champion Scott Harrison early next year in what would be the biggest fight in Ireland since the Steve Collins series in the 1990s.