It does not look like the rematch between Bournemouth’s Lee Cutler and Sam Eggington will take place any time soon.
Their fight in April ended with Eggington winning a technical decision after nine rough rounds when he was unable to continue because of damage he’d sustained in the fight.
The fight went to the scorecards, and Eggington won by a too-wide margin of 90-83, and by two closer cards of 87-85. The ninth round was scored even though as the fight was stopped before a punch was thrown.
Team Cutler immediately appealed to the WBC, whose Silver title was on the line, and the sanctioning body ordered a rematch.
Cutler, 15-2 (7 KOs), is managed by Jake McGuigan, and trained by Josh Pritchard, and the Bournemouth man entered the fight coming off a career best-win over previously-undefeated Stephen McKenna.
Team Cutler claimed that the damage that caused the end of the fight was caused by a punch, while Team Eggington said the initial wound was caused by a punch but that it was worsened with head clashes.
“I was up well up for the rematch, I said this in the ring, I said in this hotel after, I spoke to Lee in the hotel after,” said Eggington. “And I said like, ‘You know they’re gonna get us to do this again, but obviously we’ll get paid a lot more,’ and I was joking about it, and he was like, ‘Yeah.’”
In the aftermath of the fight, however, Team Eggington felt slighted by accusations that they had somehow interfered with the result on BoxRec, and they did not wholly agree with Cutler’s assessment of where the fight was going.
“[They were saying] that I wanted to get out the ring and how he had me on the back foot and he was bullying me and all this bullshit. And if I’m honest, if I’d have just gone and said, ‘Listen we want a rematch,’ and had said, ‘Do you want to do a rematch,’ we would have probably took it. It wouldn’t have been a problem at all…
“I’ll probably fight before the end of the year, no doubt, but it won’t be Cutler, and that’s just me being petty more than anything else. I don’t mind telling everyone that. I’m just not going to do it just for the simple reason, you’ve gone the stupid way about it. You’re trying to say… it’s just a lot of nonsense. It’s petty bullshit. Like I say, on the night, I seen him at the hotel. There was no bullshit then. It was like, ‘Oh yeah, maybe we could get a rematch.’ I was like, ‘Listen, if they want us to rematch them, they’ll ask us and I’m down.’”
“And again, nothing, nothing was said on the night. And the next day I heard loads of bullshit about putting in complaints to WBC. And can I just say as well, the WBC have ordered a rematch. But they have also said that the referee was bang on right with what he’s done. Because just putting in that the WBC have ordered a rematch will make it look like that what everything he’s saying was right. It’s what the referee said was right. He [Cutler] was using his head all night. I was practically fucking having a fight with Zinedine Zidane [a soccer player once infamously sent off for a flagrant headbutt]. I’m quite rough and rugged around the edges when I’m boxing. I like a few headbutts here and there. It is what it is to me. But this guy was using his head like it was his third hand.”
Whatever has been said and done after the fight means that tempers have flared on both sides.
Cutler doesn’t think Eggington was ever interested in a rematch.
“I just think they’re all complete lies, because straight away in the ring afterwards I said, ‘We’ve got to do the rematch’ and he said, ‘We’ll see about that. They’re gonna have to pay me a lot more money this time around,’ and I just knew straight away he wasn’t that interested in it,” said the Bournemouth man. “I think it’s just an excuse. If anyone was in my position and saw the footage after the fight of me cutting him with a shot, and it wasn’t like it was a tiny little cut, I’ve took a screenshot of the cut and then of him getting interviewed afterward and it’s pretty much identical, I hit him with shots on that cut as well. Whether you had him up on the scorecards or not, I won the previous three rounds and the majority of the fans watching had it a draw, and I’ve had his own support even message me saying ‘I’m a massive fan of Sam Eggington, but I felt bad for you in that fight, the tide was turning.’
“There were two rounds left to go and I had so much left in the tank and I think people could see he was falling apart. He would have done exactly the same with kicking up a little bit of uproar if the roles were reversed, I just think it’s an excuse from them so they don’t have to give me a rematch.”
Cutler now hopes promoter Boxxer and broadcaster Sky Sports put up sufficient money to make it attractive to Eggington.
“I don’t see him taking the rematch,” Cutler conceded. “I said it straight after. Jon Pegg [Eggington’s manager] said they would do it again, but Sam wasn’t up for it.”
Cutler added; “The WBC wouldn’t order a rematch if they thought it was an unjust decision.”
Eggington has seen a lot in his entertaining 36-9 (20 KOs) career. The Smethwick warrior feels he has nothing to prove fighting Cutler again.
“I get offers every week for fights here and there, whether it’s in England or abroad. And if I’m honest, I’m that far gone in my career, I can’t really afford another 12 stitches.”
Both Eggington and Pegg take exception to claims that he was being bullied and would have been stopped in the final two rounds.
“It’s really left a bad taste in my mouth, the way they’ve gone on about it,” said Pegg. “Because in the ring, they asked for a rematch and we went, ‘Yeah, yeah, no problem.’
“And then they started saying we’ve done underhanded tactics. And obviously, the WBC has supported it [Team Cutler’s calls for a rematch], but they haven’t mentioned that the WBC have turned around and said, ‘Yeah, the referee was totally in the right and the right man won.’ But if you look at their social media, it’s like Sam robbed them. And it’s just kind of annoyed me a little bit. I’m like, ‘Well, you want a rematch? I might not give you what you want because you’ve been totally bad sports about it.’ Sam isn’t really bothered, but he’s had some fights where even the establishment’s gone, ‘That ain’t fair.’ And Sam’s always gone, ‘I’ll just get on with it. No big deal.’ So to win it fairly clearly and this whole thing is like, ‘Oh, well, Lee was going to stop him in the last two rounds.’ And I was like, ‘Well, you’ve got someone who hasn’t scored a stoppage in three years against someone who’s been dropped once in 45 fights and has had much better fighters trying to finish him off when he’s in a worse state.’”
“And just like I say, it’s just got a little bit disrespectful. And I thought, ‘You know what? We’ve got the win. We’re looking for fights. Why do we need to go back over our ground?’ So it’s kind of annoyed me a little bit.
“It was a tough hard fight. I had us two or three rounds up. As did almost everyone else. And yeah, Sam was tired. But when you look at the punch stats, he’d thrown double the amount of punches… And he [Cutler] might have come on strong. But this is Sam Eggington we’re talking about… That’s just really disrespectful to someone who’s never been knocked out. You know, Abbas Barrou had Sam in all kinds of trouble in round nine and he [Eggington] come back and won round 10.”
Eggington’s cut will have him out of the ring for a couple of months, but Pegg says he wants his fighter to have five more fights – making it to 50 bouts – before calling it a career.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
