JOSHUA BUATSI has showed off the full extent of his horribly swollen eye after narrowly surviving a beating against Marko Calic.
The British light-heavyweight took a severe battering to his left eye before stopping Calic in round seven last night.
Buatsi, who is managed by Anthony Joshua, said he felt swelling in the third round after being clocked by the Croatian.
And in an interview with iFL TV he showed just how much it had blown up – with a nasty cut underneath.
Quizzed about the injury, Croydon star Buatsi said: “It’s good. The doctor said it was just a bit of swelling.
“Hopefully it goes down quickly. It is what it is. It’s a fight, [I might] come home with a bit of scars but it is what it is.”
Buatsi had spent almost 400 days out of the ring before sealing his comeback with a win to take his record to 13-0.
But things looked hairy as early as the second round – no doubt the toughest of his career so far.
Underdog Calic, 33, connected several times before going onto the attack around Buatsi’s eye in the third.
Buatsi, who won bronze at the Rio 2016, said: “In the third round I felt my swelling. I thought ‘damn!’ But you have to do what you’ve got to do.
“This guy said he was coming to burst the Buatsi bubble. I was here to defend it.
“It was a hard fight but I learned. I couldn’t see his right hands, I adapted. I dealt with it.”
But Buatsi said he was not pleased with how he fought.
He explained how the swollen eye was proof he should not have got hit – but that it will stand him in good stead going forward.
Buatsi added: “The eye swelled up. The vision went a little bit. But I went with it and came out on top.”
