BOXING fans were treated to some exciting bouts that included a couple of knockouts at the Shepway Boxing Club's dinner show at the Leas Cliff Hall on Saturday.

The annual dinner show is a key fundraiser for the club that supports their efforts right through the year and the club have an added ambition now to find new premises for their senior boxers as they have outgrown the facilities at the Dover Road gym.

The show certainly provided some top rate entertainment for the dinner guests with the added bonus of hosting nine championship bouts for the Southern Counties novices titles.

There were four supporting bouts which featured two Shepway youngsters and although both were narrowly beaten there was plenty of support which included again world champion Mo Takalobighashi from Margate who has regularly attended the event.

After an excellent meal the supporters were in a receptive mood for the bouts that followed and the highlight was a stunning second round knockout win for Woking's powerful young champion Gary Churchman over Clint Williams of Golden Ring. It was his fifth straight win and his third knockout victory which clinched him the Class A light middlewight trophy.

The other knockout came even quicker with a lighting bolt from Onlow's Jim Smith that put Whitehawk's Wesley Beagley on his knees in the first round of the heavyweight clash.

In the opening Class A championship clash for the lightweight title Waterside's James Dean twice put his opponent John Taylor from Southwick on the canvas and although he bravely got up the bout went Dean's way to save him further punishment.

Canterbury's Richie Goodfellow had a terrific welterweight clash with John Verlander from Hastings before being edged out narrowly 11-7 in a bout that could have gone either way.

One of the best contests to go the distance was the middleweight clash taken by the tall rangy Russell Vince who gave Woking their second Southern Counties title with a 25-14 win over Lee Woolon of the Lawrence Club and in the battle of the big men at super heavy Brighton's Neil Baker beat Rob Murray (Lawrence) 9-3.

It was not a good night for the Kent boxers as Westree's Mario Rizzo also went out in a tight contest with some big hitting to Shaun Brown from Hove.

However, the Maidstone club did have a winner in Westree's Danny Shannon in one of the supporting clashes when he outscored Shepway's Craig Cox in a 36kg bout.

The other Shepway lad in action was Paul Milton who was edged out by Bognor's Danny Tabb at 55kgs.

in the other supporting matches Canterbury's Dean Clarkson went down to a majority decision against Dean Buchanan of Hastings and the Sussex club had another winner in Dean Sanders against Onslow's M Johnson.

There were also two Class B Under-20 championship bouts after five titles went to walkovers.

Southwick's James Brewster won the light middleweight title 20-12 against Lester Bevan (Eastleigh) who had previously denied Shepway's Tony Puckrose the chance of boxing in front of his home crowd for the title in the preliminaries.

Crawley's Andrew Watson had a fine 11-7 win Bognor's Paul Morby in the middleweight bout.

There were also awards to Shepway Boxing Club stalwarts Harry Slater and Rose Hewitt presented by Takaloo and club sponsor Costas Sotiriou from Sotirio's Restaurant in Hythe.

Costas gave further support buying a first edition sketch of Frank Bruno while other signed photos raised valuable funds for the club at the auction.

Anyone interested in training with or become involved in the club can contact Harry on 01303 253489 or Rose at 01303 271936.