British champion Lewis Ritson loses split decision to Francesco Patera

The Belgian, who went into the fight in Ritson's home town of Newcastle as the outsider, finished the fight the stronger and won a European belt for a second time, with two judges scoring 116-112 in his favour.

Ritson was caught by a blow to the body in the fifth round, was hurt again at the end of the seventh and was hanging on in the final 20 seconds of the 10th.

"I want to apologise, it is not the performance I wanted tonight," Ritson told Sky Sports.

"I was hit with a body shot in the fifth round and I couldn't recover from there."