VINTON Street Gym (VSG) boxers have gone undefeated at Saturday’s ‘Night of the Dragons’ professional boxing showcase at Bendigo Exhibition Centre.

In a hugely successful night for the California Gully-based gym, middleweight Matt Hall and super lightweight Brad Morgan became the gym’s first ever pro-title holders.

Both scored second round stoppages against their Thai opponents to win their respective first titles in just their sixth fights.

Making it an even bigger night for the gym, heavyweight Jesse Tuitupou stopped Thai fighter Tinnakorn Sirrikul in the first round to score a win in his professional debut.

A fourth stable fighter, Dino Rafaeles fought a four-round exhibition against Daniel ‘The Hawk’ Huculak.

Gary Connolly, who shares the training duties at VSG with older brother Pat, said a feature of Hall and Morgan’s title wins was that they came against quality young and fit fighters.

“They were hardened fighters, who came to win and fought really well,” he said.

“But in the end, Brad with his power and his work-rate overwhelmed his opponent (Worraphon Jesandajindawat).

“Fortunately it was stopped. Those Thai fighters are very tough and you don’t want to see them hang in there and get hurt.

“Matt’s fight was pretty even …. the first round his opponent (Sutee Noonkrathok) actually landed some pretty good shots.

“But Matt stuck to his game plan; we’d work on a left rip and he came out in the second round and landed one and the other guy got counted out.

“He got up and was okay, which is what we want to see.

“Because a lot of the officials and referees haven’t seen them before because Matt and Brad have been fighting overseas, they commented that they were pretty top class.”

Morgan improved his record to six wins from six fights, with five of them coming via knockout.

Hall has five wins from his six bouts, with one split decision draw.

The fights were the young pair’s first in Bendigo since their participation on the ‘Battle on the Goldfields II’ card in June 2016.

With former WBO world bantamweight champion Marlon Tapales’ headline fight against Rivo Rengkung falling through earlier in the week, Filipino fighter Neil John Tabanao relished the opportunity of stepping up to the main event and claimed the vacant WBF Asia Pacific super bantamweight title against Thailand’s Rachan Yageow.

“In a lot of ways for him it worked out well that Marlon Tapales’ fight was rescheduled …. With Marlon being such a world class fighter it might have in some ways overshadowed him,” he said.

“The fact he advanced to the main event and fought for a WBF Asia Pacific title, he was able to show everyone just how good he is and how ready he is to step up for a world title shot.

“He’s ready and is probably only two fights away from a world title.”

It was Tabanao’s second bout in Bendigo.

The 23-year-old defeated one of Australia’s brightest young boxing prospects Ibrahim Balla for the vacant World Boxing Organisation Oriental featherweight title at Bendigo Stadium in June 2016.

It was one of only two losses for Balla in his promising 14-bout career, his most recent coming on March 10 this year.

Tabanao moved his own record to 15-4.