Just before Dubois and Wardley walked to the ring, Louie O’Doherty (12-0-1, 3 KOs) defended his British and Commonwealth lightweight titles against Michael Gomez Jr. (23-2-1, 8 KOs).

Gomez shot out of the blocks and built a commanding lead and his activity and aggression seemingly kept him a step ahead over the course of 12 rounds.

Rather than hearing “and the new” and accomplishing his dream of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a British champion, Gomez had to settle for a controversial majority draw.

The result was met with widespread derision.

Gomez has protested loudly about the decision and, on Monday, an honest O’Doherty took to instagram and broke his own silence on the issue.

Rather than concocting a list of excuses or claiming people had seen something they hadn’t, the 26-year-old from Essex admitted that he had been lucky to retain his titles.

“I just watched the fight. I’m probably going to mess myself up a bit by saying it, but I think Gomez won the fight, eight rounds to four,” O’Doherty said on Instagram.

“It doesn’t mean that the judges didn’t see it my way. From ringside, they see what they see, I don't think it was cheating because there's a lot of rounds there that were close but, after watching it back, my personal opinion was that score card, eight to four. So, well done to Michael. Respect, and I've just got to be an honest man, no matter how that messes me up.”

Despite collecting a host of titles during a brief but successful start to his professional career, O’Doherty is still relatively inexperienced. He grew into the fight as the rounds passed and while he could make a convincing case for winning the second half of the fight, it would have been difficult to find anybody except the three ringside judges who didn’t believe that Gomez had done enough to win.

For entirely different reasons, neither man will be happy with Saturday’s events but controversy sells and a sequel will generate much more interest and intrigue than the first fight did.

Although boxing rarely seems to be dictated by common sense, it seems inevitable a rematch will be ordered and both will have the chance to bring matters to a conclusive end in the not-too-distant future.