A really busy evening of boxing at Barrhead Sports Centre on May 5 saw a total of 12 bouts of boxing entertain over 250 people from the Barrhead area.

A special thanks goes to Barrhead Amateur Boxing Club's Honorary President, MP Jim Murphy, for making the effort to attend the night and support the local boxing club.

Unfortunately the four international boxers at the Barrhead club - Brian Peacock, Steven Rae, Ryan Downer and Ryan Smith - were unavailable to box at the club's home show due to injuries and unable to get opponents to box them.

However, Ryan Smith was able to carry-out a top exhibition with Colin Harkins from the Osprey club.

Both boxers are top internationals and it was a real crowd pleaser for the boxing fanatics.

Mia Peacock and Iona McDermott, both aged 10, are two female boxers who opened the show with an outstanding display of boxing.

As both girls are too young to actually fight at present they entertained the crowd with a fantastic exhibition bout where both girls were winners and received their trophies from MP Jim Murphy.

The top of the bill match-up featured light heavyweight Darren Tarr who boxed a gutsy opponent Gareth Pearce from Edinburgh's Lochend boxing club.

Darren was simply too classy a boxer for his Edinburgh opponent and stuck to his game plan of boxing at distance behind a stiff jab backed up by a heavy right hand.

Darren, who joined the Barrhead boxing club 23 months after leaving Paisley amateur boxing club, has been working hard in the gym and he has adapted to a different style and training routine at the Barrhead club The chief support to the main event was Gay Rae who sold over 100 tickets for the show.

Gary is a very popular member of the Barrhead community and he showed his class and boxing ability against a tough opponent, James Miller from the Noble art boxing club.

Gary clearly won in everyone's eyes, but the judges and unfortunately judged him to have lost the fight by one point. Gary did everything he was told and more, and his performance can't be faulted.

These things do happen in amateur boxing with the computer scoring system and for this reason the Amateur boxing is going back to the old way of judge scoring after the Olympics in the summer.

On the brighter side Gary did win best boxer of the evening award where he walked away with the Bobby Ferguson memorial trophy which is a fantastic achievement.

Gary is one to watch out for next season as his ability to listen in the gym is unearthing new skills each week where he is not only getting faster and more powerful but throwing punches from every angle.

Another disappointed member of the club was 16-year-old Max Nutini who had his first boxing fight against Conner Delaney from the Paisley amateur boxing club.

Max, who has trained very hard for the fight, was clearly winning the fight in the first two rounds.

However, going into the third round Max tired very quickly and was caught on the ropes with his hands down by his opponent.

The bout went the full three rounds and unfortunately Max lost the fight by three points, and maybe just inexperience beat Max on the night.

Sohab Mohamid boxed a real tough opponent in Robert Burns from the Renfrewshire boxing club and again it was a very close fight which could have gone either way.

Sohab won this heated debate by two points and his coaches were very pleased with his performance.

Martin McBreherty also carried out a fantastic exhibition bout where both boxers were winners.

Dillon Dempsey was a clear winner in his exhibition bout and is a young man on a mission to get back into the boxing ring again soon.

Aiden McBreherty, 14, was overpowered by his opponent and the referee correctly stepped in to stop the fight in the second round The Barrhead Amateur boxing club would like to take this opportunity to thank both the sponsors and the support from all members of the community who attended the evening and everyone involved at the club hopes everyone enjoyed the display of boxing and the evening itself.