Wembley, UK - Sam Noakes continued his charge up the lightweight rankings as he knocked out Italian champion Vicenzo Finiello in the fourth round. 

Noakes is an impressive come-forward picture and cut down the ring in impressive fashion before finishing the job in style. 

The ending came quickly, Noakes landing a series of right hands before a smart right uppercut on the inside that sent Finiello to the floor, where he took Mark Lyson’s full count at 1:54 of the fourth. 

Noakes, 24, is now 9-0, all by stoppage. He retained his WBC silver international belt. 

Dennis McCann keeps winning and keeps getting plenty of plaudits without overly convincing. He was a clear enough winner over eight rounds against Charles Tondo, of Tanzania – winning the WBO “youth” bantamweight belt – but he seemed to switch off after a good start and was at times a bit easy to hit. 

When he’s good, McCann can look very good. He’s rangy, he has nice punch variety. But having settled down from being a bit hyper-active in his early fights, against Tondo, when he failed to blow him away early on, he was caught not really doing much as Tondo came on. 

The first four rounds were all McCann as he started well and hurt Tondo in the first two rounds with fizzing lefts over the top. 

But after McCann finished the fourth well on top, Tondo probably had a good case for winning the fifth as he landed plenty as McCann eased off. In the sixth too, McCann did not really take the initiative and Tondo got stuck in, rattling McCann with single left or two-punch combinations. 

McCann upped his game in the sixth as he was more positive and led off more and looked like he could be about to stop Tondo late on as he opened up, before the Tanzanian fired back and caught McCann in the dying seconds. 

The Kent boxer kept pressing in the seventh as he loaded up on his lefts and Tondo seemed repeatedly hurt. 

Tondo started the final round well, but McCann was on top by the middle and finished well, earning a 79-73 card from all three judges for a unanimous decision. 

Royston Barney Smith, 18, made a successful professional debut with a one-sided four-round decision over Spain’s Adan Martinez at lightweight. 

Martinez was hurt by a left near the end of the first round, but Smith did not have much time to follow it up. After the success Smith got a bit left-hand happy in the second, not really setting up his shots. Smith was briefly on the floor, although referee Lee Every ruled that he tripped over Martinez’s foot. 

Smith found his range better in the third and rocked Martinez back to the ropes twice with big lefts. He boxed well in the last but Martinez as able to take some of the sting out of the shots by constantly moving backwards. 

Referee Every scored it 40-36. 

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.