BOXING/National Stadium bill: Only his boxing instinct kept Bernard Dunne's unblemished professional record intact at the National Stadium on Saturday night.

In a fight he was handsomely leading going into the 10th and final round, the Irish featherweight was caught on the back of the head by Ukrainian challenger Yuri Voronin and for two long minutes did all he could to stay on his feet and avoid what would have been a career-stalling blow.

But the Dubliner, using the breadth of the ring and no small degree of holding and running for the final fraught seconds, survived to push his quest for a European title closer than ever.

Dunne will have learned a valuable, hard lesson and despite his obvious talent and committed attitude, his defence, which some experts would say can creak at times, is an area he needs to tighten up. That will apply particularly when he steps up in class and the differences between opponents are more marginal.

But the 25-year-old came through the tough bout and richly deserved to win. To his credit he had blossomed for all but two of the previous nine rounds. In beating Voronin 96-94 the three times Irish amateur champion also brought his ranking up a considerable notch. The Ukrainian was seven on the European ladder, so the win now puts Dunne in more heady territory.

"I got caught by a good shot. Caught me around the back of the ear," he said. "But I recovered. This was a learning experience for me. It will stand to me this fight. I thought I was boxing well. He just kept coming, and coming and coming and we kept banging heads. But I thought I controlled it round one to nine and then got caught in the 10th. I most definitely learned from this fight."

Dunne, although dictating the bout and at times playing the crowd, looked the more battle-scarred as a result of five small cuts around his eyes and scalp from repeated head clashes. At the mid-point stage blood was trickling into his right eye, affecting his vision, but there was no escaping his quick hands and all-round class as he picked off the durable Voronin with clean hits in all but the final three minutes. Cleverly working the body as well as the head, a lesser fighter would have folded, but Vornin, as Dunne noted, never went backwards.

"It's great for me. All the cuts were clashes," said Dunne before manager Brian Peters pointed out that none were intentional. "I was actually coasting until that part of the fight. I wasn't worried that it was going to be stopped."

Peters, who has hopes for his fighter to some day contest a world title, was a relieved man. "Yeh, yeh I was worried," he said afterwards. His job now is to see where Dunne goes next and hinted at a fight in the US in around 10 weeks time.

The European ranking Dunne now has was the real prize of the evening's work. "We're thinking of all kinds of options now," said Peters. "They're ringing all the time from the States. Maybe something in New York around August. We'll see."

Two new Irish champions also made their marks on the under card. Dublin's Robbie Murray defeated Galway's Peter McDonagh for the vacant Irish light-welterweight championship while the impressive Matthew Macklin stopped Michael Monaghan in the fifth round to claim the vacant Irish middleweight belt.