Terri Harper had little trouble with Katharina Thanderz.
Harper, making the fourth defense of her WBC junior lightweight title, thoroughly outboxed Thanderz before stopping her at 1:12 of Round 9 on the Katie Taylor-Miriam Gutierrez card Saturday in London.
Harper (11-0-1, 5 KOs) fought behind her sharp jab and used intelligent lateral movement to confound Thanderz (13-1, 2 KOs), who couldn’t figure out to land punches consistently.
The Denaby fighter was unable to hurt Thanderz through eight-plus rounds but followed her jab to land more than enough power shots to take a big lead on the cards.
In the ninth, a clash of heads stopped the fight for a few moments. Harper then hurt Thanderz with a left hook to the body and followed with a series of hard, unanswered punches, prompting referee Victor Loughlin to stop the fight.
Harper was coming off a hard-fought split draw against Natasha Jonas in August.
“I just stuck to the jab, kept moving and didn’t get dragged into that fight,” said Harper, referring toe-to-toe confrontations.
The goal of Harper and her promoter, Eddie Hearn, is for her to unify the 130-pound titles. The other major titleholders are Hyun Mi Choi, Maiva Hamadouche and Mikael Mayer.
“The key for me in women’s boxing is that the champions are willing to fight champions,” Hearn said. “There’s no reason we can’t have one champion in each division.
“That’s what fans have always wanted in boxing.”
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