Jeamie 'TKV' Tshikeva's promoter Ben Shalom has launched a scathing assessment of referee Ron Kearney's performance after his fighter was stopped by David Adeleye in controversial fashion on Saturday night at Manchester's Co-Op Live Arena.

Tshikeva (8-2, 5 KOs) and Adeleye (14-1, 13 KOs) fought for the British heavyweight title in the co-main event of a card headlined by Joe Joyce and Filip Hrgovic on DAZN.

Even though he was an underdog, Tshikeva fought well and arguably swept the first five rounds of the fight, having assumed control with his jab before controversy struck in round six.

Adeleye and Tshikeva were tied up in the middle of the ring when Kearney intervened to tell the pair to 'break' on two occasions before tapping TKV on his glove.

Tshikeva did as instructed and broke from the clinch, but as he pulled away, Adeleye met him with a vicious left hook which sent him crashing to the canvas. Though the Tottenham man got up, Adeleye went straight on the attack again and scored a second knockdown before Kearney stopped the fight.

Furious with the result, Tshikeva's trainers Barry Smith and Ben Davison angrily remonstrated with Kearney in the ring afterwards.

Shalom confirmed he would launch an appeal to get the result overturned, however, and called Kearney's performance disgraceful.

He told Louis Hart for The Ring: "What I've just witnessed was one of the most disgraceful things I've seen in my career. To see a referee call 'break' twice, take someone's arm and for him to actually count him out was one of the most crazy pieces of refereeing I've ever seen.

"It has to be overturned. I'm not even blaming David Adeleye, the referee has had an absolute nightmare, Jeamie was cruising the fight, it was getting easier for him in there, I was thinking 'how's he switched off there?' from where I was. And then I saw the ref.

"It's unbelievable, actually unbelievable, there's no other result, David Adeleye didn't win that fight, it has to be overturned.

"It's actually extremely dangerous as well, in heavyweight boxing, to call a break twice, then have someone take a punch like that is dangerous.

"We'll obviously have to appeal for it to be overturned. Jeamie doesn't even know how that's happened, he's confused. He was winning the fight, everything was going well and he gets told to break twice.

"Any heavyweight who catches you when you've got your guard down, it's going to end badly, it's so dangerous."

Shalom, who compared the situation to Paddy Donovan's disqualification defeat to Lewis Crocker back in March, also noted that Kearney denied using the word 'break' even though it can be clearly heard on the TV replays.

He added: "To see the referee deny he called 'break'...I've watched it back, he calls it twice and touches his arm, then Jeamie looks away and he's got hit, then he gets counted out. That decision cannot stay, technically it's a disqualification, look what happened to Paddy Donovan.

"It's terrible, terrible refereeing and it's lost Jeamie a fight he was winning quite comfortably."