China's boxers come out swinging at WBC

The World Boxing Championship held in Wuxi is spectated by boxing legends Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

But Su Cheng was sadly unable to match Liu's feat, losing his WBC International Super Junior Welterweight Silver Belt fight against the Georgian boxer Nikolozi Tasidis Gviniashvili after a ninth round technical knock-out.

Su is a stable-mate of Liu in Dalian, but he was facing an uphill struggle in his bout against Gviniashvili, who is ranked nearly 200 places above him in the world rankings.

The two fighters were evenly matched in the early rounds, but in the sixth round Su sustained a nasty cut to the eye that hampered him from then on.

Su fought on bravely, but the match had to be delayed to treat the wound on several occasions, and finally the referee called time on the fight in the ninth round.

On the undercard, Zhang Feng and Jin Yangcheng showed promise by both winning their fights by technical knockout in the first and fifth rounds respectively.

Despite Su's loss, the night of action in Wuxi set a high bar for the rest of the 2017 China WBC Series, which will continue with further rounds in Qidong, Xiangshan, Suzhou and Hanghou over the coming weeks.