By Yuri Tarantin

Evgeny Gradovich is not is bad spirits after losing his undefeated record, and his IBF featherweight championship, to Lee Selby via an eight round technical decision on Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London. The scores were 80-72 and 79-73 twice.

The fight was stopped after a clash of heads that opened up a cut on Grandovich. He felt the cut wasn't serious and it wasn't bothering him. The doctor and the referee disagreed and stopped the match.

Gradovich says his injury was far worse than the severe eye injury suffered by Kevin Mitchell in the following match with Jorge Linares, but nobody made a move to stop the match. He feels his fight was stopped because the judges had him down, while Mitchell was ahead on the cards at the moment Linares stopped him in the tenth.

"I told the doctor and the referee that I was ready to continue and the injury did not bother me, but they did not listen. Selby hit me with his head twice, but there was nothing wrong and I could have easily gone on. You saw in the next fight that a British boxer [Kevin Mitchell] had a far more dangerous injury and a hematoma, but no one was trying to prevent him from continuing to fight," Gradovich said.

"I think in the later rounds I could have picked up the pace. He started moving less, I started getting closer. Even before the fight, given the characteristics of the British fight, we were planning to turn things up in the later rounds. The plan was to fight like that. Of course I would very much like a rematch. I do not consider myself a loser. The fight was stopped without good reason. I was not given the opportunity to continue to fight for the title. It was a mandatory defense, so to negotiate a rematch will be a little more difficult, but hopefully we can get it. 

"Honestly, I do not want to fight again in England. I think you know why. It would be great to fight in the United States or anywhere else."

Yuri Tarantin covers boxing for Allboxing.ru