Michael Conlan beats Vladimir Nikitin but says he has work to do

Michael Conlan says he still has "an awful lot to work on" despite his victory over Vladimir Nikitin in New York at the weekend.

The Belfast featherweight secured a unanimous points decision over the Russian at Madison Square Garden to retain his WBO Inter-Continental title.

Conlan's promoter Bob Arum had spoken before the fight about a potential world title bid in 2020, but the 28-year-old was not looking too far ahead.

"I'm a work in progress," he said.

"On that performance, there is still an awful lot to work on, but I got the job done. You cannot expect perfection in every fight.

"I wanted to get him out of there and I almost got him, but I suppose it was probably better to be smart."

Nikitin had twice beaten Conlan as an amateur and a lot of the build-up to this fight focused on the second of those meetings, at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

Nikitin, 29, was handed victory by a controversial points decision in a quarter-final win that denied the Belfast fighter an Olympic medal.

Conlan had said ahead of Saturday's fight that he was keen to move on from the incident, but admitted after his win in New York he felt a lot of pressure going into the bout.

"There was probably more pressure there [in the Nikitin fight] than winning world titles," he continued.

"That was me expected to go in and blow a guy out who has beaten me twice. I knew it wasn't going to be as straightforward as everyone was thinking.

"Standing facing him for the first time since Rio, there was a lot of emotion until that bell rang. Then I had to wipe the slate clean and get on with the job."