Tony "Jaffa Cakes" Jeffries

An Olympic medal was once the fast track to professional success, a who's who of champions have won medals of various colours. Although you may not expect a lot of bronze medal winners some top current fighters who “only” won bronze include Floyd Mayweather Jr, Jermain Taylor and Andre Dirrell...however Britains Tony Jeffries doesn't seem likely to emulate them in terms of professional success from looking at his recent fights.

Although a popular north eastern lad from Britain who has a relatively large following and was a very solid amateur with good basic skills his professional careers seems to be more of a failure than many would have thought just 12 months ago. Jeffries in July '09 was 3-0 having stopped all his opponents and looking relatively impressive in doing so, it appeared he had turned over well and that the professional game was suited to him at the early novice stage. Though since then, when he's faced fighters unwilling to just fall over he's generally struggled to impress the fans that had come out to see him.

First was a lacklustre points victory over Artsiom Salomka, but that was fine, Jeffries was only fighting in his 4th contest and Salomka was experienced, durable and hard to look good against. Having not been stopped in around 4 years Salomka was no push over and managed to test Jeffries' stamina over 6 rounds. A confidence building blow out over Andrejs Tolstihs helped to again get the public behind Jeffries, though Tolstihs just didn't look like he wanted to be there, dropped 3 times in the opening round it seemed to be a badly made match (though on paper Tolstihs looked durable enough, he turned out not to be). Though since then Jeffries has failed to shine in 2 of his 3 contest being pushed hard by British journeyman Nathan King over 6 rounds in which “Jaffa” seemed to fade and was cut late on the cheek in the 6th. Though he deservedly got the win he'd been given a tough test against against a fighter that wasn't meant to be a solid test but “just another win”. King had been beaten in 6 straight going in (stopped in 2 of them) and had generally been tough but not one to be scared of, his record of 12-15 said it all, he was a win some-lose some type, but a fighter as touted as Jeffries should have won easier than he did.

Matt Hainy was another confidence builder lasting into the second round though in Jaffa's most recent fight he was lucky to escape with a draw as Michael Banbula hammered him for the final 2 rounds and seemed to split the opening 6 rounds pretty fairly. Banbula's 10-25-3 record going in seemed to look very unimpressive going in though he proved to be better than those numbers as he was arguably robbed of a win. Though the fight was Jeffries first 8 rounder (and he claimed he had only trained for 6) it showed up more flaws in the bronze medal winner who was again given a cut. Jeffries seemed to have terrible stamina huffing and puffing for the final 2 rounds in a relatively casual paced fight, he was defensively open and shaken badly by Banbula, a fighter who had never scored a stoppage. More tellingly though was that he appeared to lack the mental attitude to fight the final 2 rounds.

Having turned over with plenty of hype behind him he's been exposed as a flawed fighter who appears, at this point, to lack the tools he'll need to really make a mark on the professional scene.