Anthony Cacace Stops Leigh Wood in Ninth Round

There was no red carpet waiting for Anthony Cacace when he arrived at the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, but by the time the referee was stepping between him and Leigh Wood in the ninth round, towel mid-air and the home crowd stunned, you got the sense he didn’t need one. Cacace came as champion, left the same way, and somewhere in between reminded everyone watching exactly what happens when preparation, pressure, and punch placement all come together in one fighter.

This wasn’t some out-of-nowhere ambush. It was a slow tightening of the screws, a calculated plan for a man fighting in his own backyard.

A Measured Start, Followed by a Shift in Gears

Early on, things looked even enough. Both men, the same age, knew what was at stake and carried the caution of experience into the opening rounds. Wood tried to take the centre, established the jab, looked to settle, and for a few minutes you could convince yourself this was going to be a distance fight where timing and points would matter more than power and pressure.

But that idea didn’t hold up for long. Cacace started landing the right hand early—nothing dramatic at first, just enough to make Wood think. In the second round, he landed one that stopped Wood in his tracks and, while the home fighter answered with a solid shot of his own just before the bell, you could already see the gap starting to widen, not on the scorecards, but in the balance of control.

By the third, Cacace had found his groove. He mixed in one of his signature uppercuts, switched briefly to southpaw, and landed a left that sent Wood back a step. He’d made his point—this fight wasn’t going to belong to the man with the loudest crowd support.

Rounds Four to Eight: Control, Pressure, Blood

Wood did manage a solid fourth round, found some rhythm, landed clean more than once, but there was no momentum shift. Cacace’s jab—stiff, spiteful, and increasingly frequent—started dictating the exchanges in round five, and from that point on, he was slowly taking over the fight without ever really letting it look like he was forcing it.

By the sixth, the Belfast man was pushing combinations together with more confidence. He wasn’t headhunting, wasn’t rushing anything, just chipping away and building towards something. In the seventh, he got caught again mid-stance-switch—not a perfect round by any means—but he responded like a man who knew he didn’t need to win every minute to win the war.

Then came the eighth, and with it came blood. Cacace was leaking from the nose, but if anything, it pushed him to work closer. Late in the round, he landed a left that forced Wood to reset in a hurry. You could see it -not panic, not damage that ends a fight - but a man suddenly aware he was running out of ways to win it.

The Ninth: 

Wood came out fast at the start of the ninth, maybe trying to swing things back his way, maybe thinking he could catch Cacace before the momentum slipped completely. Instead, he walked into the kind of right hand that doesn’t drop you immediately but takes your legs away a second or two later. He stumbled, the ropes kept him from hitting the canvas, and the ref stepped in with a count.

Most fighters in that position either recover and hold or fade quickly. Wood did a bit of both, but Cacace wasn’t offering time for either. The follow-up was brutal without being frantic. There was no wild swinging, no overreach, just a man taking apart another fighter with well-placed, fight-ending punches. The towel came in from Wood’s corner just before referee John Latham could step in and stop it himself.

Cacace Stays Champion

Anthony Cacace walked out of Nottingham not only with his IBO super-featherweight title still in hand, but with a lot more eyes on him than there were going in. There was no controversy, no split decision, no drama around the scorecards. Just a convincing, calculated finish from a man who never looked like he doubted himself for a second.

His record now sits at 24-1, and after this, it’ll be hard for anyone in or around his division to not take note. It’s not just the win—it’s the way he got it, in the wrong city, against a guy the crowd was ready to carry through fire, and he shut it all down in the ninth round without ever raising his voice.

What’s Next for the Fighters?

For Anthony Cacace, this win opens the door to something more. Bigger fights and the kind of match-ups that the boxing faithful cannot miss. Whether it’s domestic dust-ups or a move onto a broader international stage, Cacace has proven he belongs at the top of the tree.