It was a bad weekend for Eastern Cape boxers, as they crashed to stoppage losses in similar fashion in world title bouts in Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
The defeats against unbeaten opponents were due to their inability to defend against left hands, which ended their bouts inside the distance.
The first to taste the punch was Mdantsane’s Thulani Mbenge in his maiden defence of his IBO welterweight title against Russian Vadim Musaev at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Stadium on Friday.
Having never been stopped before, Mbenge got off to a disastrous start when he was dropped in the first round and was forced to play catch-up against the unbeaten Russian.
His eagerness to make up for the knockdown led him to fight carelessly as he lunged in with his punches, putting him in the firing line of the Russian’s big left hand.
The same punch dropped Mbenge hard in the third round, and as he attempted to get up, his legs failed to support him, leading him to crash back to the canvas twice to force the referee to stop the bout.
Mbenge’s trainer, Sean Smith, said the bad knockdown in the first round disrupted their fight strategy and made his charge overeager to make up for it.
He also attributed the loss to the huge amount of weight Mbenge had to shed before the fight, adding that inactivity had also played a role.
“We had a massive weight cut of 8kg in the fight week, and that caught us off-guard,” he said.
“I think he was also slightly overeager to perform because of inactivity.”
Mbenge was last in action in May when he needed just three rounds to stop Namibian Emmanuel Mungandjela in a non-title bout.
Landile Ngxeke suffered a similar fate in his first fight abroad when he crashed to a seventh-round stoppage loss to Jose Salas Reyes in Mexico on Sunday morning.
Attempting to return the IBF bantamweight belt to SA 28 years after Mbulelo Botile surrendered it, Ngxeke, from Sada, appeared overawed by the occasion, as he could not deal with the speed and technique of his 23-year-old southpaw foe.
Reyes got off to a good start, sweeping all but one of the rounds with crisp punches as he capitalised on Ngxeke’s failure to use the jab.
The Mexican continued to beat Ngxeke to the punch, darting out of harm’s way when the visitor tried to retaliate.
Ngxeke appeared stiff as he failed to let his hands go, instead covering up only to throw an occasional wild right hand which missed the target.
As the round progressed, his punch output subsided as he concentrated on covering up, giving Reyes an opportunity to tee off with quick combos punctuated by the straight left.
The punch hit home in the seventh round, sending Ngxeke to the ropes, where he covered up, not fighting back, as Reyes unleashed a fusillade of blows.
As is the norm when an opponent does not fight back, the referee jumped in to stop the fight, drawing a protest from Ngxeke.
However, the opportunity to win a world title was gone as he slumped to his second loss — both by stoppage — in 19 bouts with one draw.
Daily Dispatch