By Elliot Foster

Jake Ball claimed another fringe title on his road back to the top of the light-heavyweight division.

The Surrey puncher boxed to orders from coach Jim McDonnell to secure a unanimous points decision over Miles Shinkwin, exclusively live on Sky Sports.

The scorecards didn’t tell the whole story of the fight, with Shinkwin having spells of success throughout, but Ball produced his best boxing performance to date at York Hall, on the undercard of Katie Taylor’s WBA female lightweight title defence against Jessica McCaskill.

Ball, after being given the fight on points by margins of 97-93, 98-92, 98-92, claimed the vacant WBA Continental title.

Earlier in the card, Ted Cheeseman set up a potential vacant British super-welterweight title clash against James Metcalf with a comprehensive 80-72 points win over Tony Dixon.

The British Boxing Board of Control stewards opened the purse bids for a showdown between Cheeseman and Metcalf on Wednesday and it is expected that the pair will vie for the unoccupied Lonsdale belt after Liam Williams was stripped on a technicality.

Cheeseman barely put a foot wrong, using his superior timing, speed and distance to outclass the vastly overmatched Dixon, who now has two defeats on his 12-fight ledger.

Joe Cordina dominated Lee Connelly in a scheduled eight-round contest to end the first calendar year of his pro career flawlessly.

The Welshman, who boxed on the undercard of Anthony Joshua’s WBA Super, IBF and IBO heavyweight title defence against Carlos Takam at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, didn’t put a foot wrong as he stopped the Derbyshire man inside four rounds to move to 6-0.

And Lawrence Okolie took less than two completed rounds to demolish Portugal’s Antonio Sousa.

The plan now is that he will return on February 3 at the O2 Arena in London and although a fight against Isaac Chamberlain is the main priority for that date, Eddie Hearn, his promoter, revealed that a conversation has been had with the team of Commonwealth champion Luke Watkins for the fight on the same night if the Chamberlain clash can’t be tied up.