Ball loses WBA featherweight title after brutal knockout defeat to Figueroa

Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena was stunned into silence on Saturday night as local hero Nick Ball surrendered his WBA featherweight belt to American challenger Brandon Figueroa, who closed the show with a chilling 12th-round knockout.

For 11 frames the bout had been a knife-edge affair, the judges’ pencils poised as Ball, 27, pressed forward behind a high guard and Figueroa, 29, answered with a higher work-rate. The champion entered the contest boasting a perfect 24-0 ledger; he left it on the canvas, his unbeaten record shattered and the title strap around the waist of a man now a three-time world titlist.

The decisive moment arrived with the clock bleeding away. A laser-like left hand from Figueroa crashed into Ball’s jaw, depositing the champion flat on his back. Ball rose, but his legs betrayed him and Figueroa pounced, driving his dazed foe into the ropes. Referee John Latham stepped in, waving the contest off at 2:47 of the final session and sparking pandemonium. Members of Figueroa’s celebration party surged across the apron, colliding with Ball’s corner and igniting a brief melee that required security intervention.

Ball had flirted with momentum earlier, notably in the eighth when both men endured rocky moments—Ball pinned to the strands, Figueroa slipping to a knee after losing his footing—yet the Liverpool favourite could not sustain the assault. Figueroa’s volume punching ultimately told: he threw more, landed more, and when the opening appeared, he finished with surgical precision.

The defeat marks Ball’s first professional loss; Figueroa, meanwhile, adds another road victory to a résumé that already includes reigns at 122 lb and 126 lb.

Attention now turns to September 12 in Riyadh, where Saudi financier Turki Alalshikh hopes to showcase Figueroa’s first title defence on the undercard of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s return. “A huge congratulations to Brandon Figueroa for showing his character and travelling to the champion’s backyard,” Alalshikh posted. “We want to see you defend your title when we stage ‘Mexico vs the World’.”

Earlier on the card, 20-year-old Warrington middleweight Luke Turner, watched by childhood friend and world darts champion Luke Littler, registered the first stoppage win of his fledgling career.

For Ball, the rebuilding begins. For Figueroa, the featherweight throne is once again his, seized in dramatic fashion on Merseyside soil.