Anthony Cacace Tops Jazza Dickens For WBA Crown

Anthony Cacace walked into the 3Arena on St Patrick's weekend and did what he has made something of a habit in recent years. He found a way to win. It was not always pretty, it was rarely comfortable, and by his own admission, it was a long way short of his best, but when the judges returned their verdicts, the 37-year-old from Belfast had the WBA super featherweight title around his waist and another world champion's scalp to hang alongside the growing collection already on his wall.

The scores were 116-112, 116-113 and 115-113, all for Cacace, who moves to 25-1 with nine knockouts and becomes, in the process, the only male world boxing champion currently fighting from the island of Ireland. James Dickens, the defending champion from Liverpool, falls to 36-6 and loses the belt at the first time of asking, having only been elevated to full WBA champion in December when Lamont Roach relinquished the title rather than make a mandatory defence.

The weigh-in had offered a glimpse of the physical mismatch that would define much of the tactical picture. Cacace, who came in at 129.5 pounds to Dickens' 129.14, holds an eight-inch reach advantage and a five-inch height advantage over the Liverpudlian. For a natural southpaw like Dickens, whose best work tends to come when he can get inside and work at close quarters, those dimensions represented a genuine problem that no amount of guile alone was going to fully solve across twelve rounds.

The opening two rounds did little to warm a crowd that had arrived in considerable voice. Both men were cautious, each clearly wary of the other's power, with Cacace probing for range and Dickens looking to close the distance without offering anything clean on the way in. It was the kind of measured, professional sparring that makes sense in a world title fight and makes for slightly turgid watching from the stands. Dublin's 3Arena, so often a cauldron on fight nights, settled into an attentive rather than excitable silence.

The third round introduced the fight's most intriguing tactical subplot. Cacace, apparently frustrated with his inability to establish a working rhythm from his natural orthodox stance, switched to southpaw in an attempt to alter the geometry. Against a natural southpaw, it is a bold move and not always a wise one, and Dickens initially made him pay by landing two sharp left hands. Cacace recovered to close the round with a left hook of his own, but the experiment reflected the difficulty he was having in finding a settled approach against a man whose defensive angles were causing him genuine problems.

Dickens had his best spell across the fourth and into the fifth. The left hand was landing with regularity, he was moving well off the ropes, and there was a spell when the Liverpudlian looked capable of dictating terms for a sustained period. Cacace, to his credit, responded directly. The fifth round was his most dominant of the entire contest. He caught Dickens early with a clean left hook that visibly shook the champion's legs, then pressed the advantage with sustained pressure that kept Dickens on the back foot for the better part of three minutes. Dickens survived and found his footing again late in the round, but the damage in terms of the scorecard had been done, and Cacace had demonstrated that the size and reach advantage could be weaponised when applied with proper intent.

The fight settled into a competitive but ultimately unsatisfying pattern through the middle rounds. Both men landed, neither man consistently hurt the other, and the crowd, having roared Cacace into the arena under a wave of green flags and republican fervour, gradually subsided into something closer to polite uncertainty. The sixth was difficult to score. The seventh and eighth were similarly ambiguous.

The ninth round provided the contest's final genuine flash of drama. Dickens, who had been slightly quieter than necessary through the middle section of the fight, rediscovered his range and landed his most authoritative punches of the second half of the contest. Cacace, meanwhile, suffered a cut near his right eye following a clash of heads, and looked momentarily unsettled as he went to his corner ahead of the tenth. For a brief stretch, it appeared the champion had identified a path back into the fight.

Whatever momentum Dickens had assembled in the ninth, he could not sustain it. The tenth and eleventh rounds were competitive without being conclusive, and going into the final three minutes, the sense at ringside was that Dickens needed a knockout, not a close round, to retain his belt. He came out for the twelfth with the necessary urgency, pressing forward and looking for the shot that might turn the night around. Cacace, never a man to oblige when the smarter option is available, backpedalled and denied him clean targets. Dickens could not find a punch with sufficient authority, and the final bell left the matter comfortably in the hands of the judges.

Cacace was generous to his opponent afterwards but unsparing in his assessment of his own performance. He called it a poor night at the office. Given that a poor night at his office still produces a world title, one can only speculate at what a good one might look like. In the past two years, he has stopped Joe Cordina for the IBF belt, beaten Josh Warrington, beaten Leigh Wood, and now outpointed Dickens. That is four consecutive wins over fighters who have held or challenged for world titles. Not since the days of Barry McGuigan has an Irish fighter at this weight commanded such consistent respect from the men he faces.

For Dickens, the night carried its own particular sadness. The 34-year-old from Liverpool has endured the full range of the sport's fortunes during a long and frequently remarkable career. There was a broken jaw against Rigondeaux a decade ago. There was a late stoppage defeat against Kid Galahad. There was a knockout loss in Dubai in 2023 that appeared, briefly, to have ended his world-level ambitions entirely. His recovery from that defeat, culminating in the fourth-round knockout of Albert Batyrgaziev that earned him the interim WBA title, represented one of the sport's better redemption stories of recent years. Losing the belt in its first defence, on a night in a foreign city against a man who had every physical advantage, does not diminish that story. It simply adds another chapter.

Cacace, already pointing toward a unification fight, named Emanuel Navarrete, the unified IBF and WBO champion, as his preferred next opponent. Whether that fight materialises or whether a domestic showdown with an emerging home talent is selected instead, the Belfast man has earned the right to make demands. At 37, and against all reasonable expectations, he is operating at the very top of his profession.