For Joey Laviolette, the thrill of the chase was much better than the catch.

He realized early enough in his Emerald Gloves main event fight against Kenny Lally there was nothing to be gained waiting for Lally to make the wrong move, and went on the warpath with a attack that brought the hometown favourite to his knees.

In a thrilling three-round bout that lived up to the hype, Laviolette, of Halifax, and Lally, the hometown favourite, provided an intense nine minutes of pulse-racing entertainment in the 57-kilogram final and gave an enthusiastic boxing crowd of 1,000 at the Northern Sport Centre its money's worth.

"That was the toughest fight I've every had with Kenny," said Laviolette, who scored a unanimous victory and also won the Emerald Boy award as fighter of the tournament.

"There wasn't that much of a difference, I think I just landed the harder punches. Kudos to him, he kept fighting back. Kenny's an awesome fighter and I hate that one of us has to win and one of us has to lose.

"I knew I lost the first round and I won the second round, but I had no idea how it was going to turn out because that third round was close. To be honest, I didn't expect to win that fight in the third round because he was in his hometown and you should always expect the hometown guy to get the hometown decision. But I guess they saw something else in me that gave me the decision."