South African veteran Danie Venter is the new World Boxing Federation World Cruiserweight Champion after defeating Shawn “The Sniper” Cox from Barbados for the vacant title on Saturday night, September 21, at the Heartfelt Arena in Pretoria.
Venter put on a fantastic performance as he destroyed the usually dangerous Cox in the first round. Already inside the first few seconds Venter knocked Cox down, and he didn’t waste any time following up to finish the fight with some ferocious punching later in the stanza.
After the crowning moment of his ten years as a professional, Venter, who represented his country in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, improved his ledger to 18-6 (13). Shawn Cox, losing his second shot at world honours after winning a few regional titles, dropped to 17-3 (16).
In the co-feature of a massive card, Daniel Bruwer won the vacant WBF International Cruiserweight title with an impressive victory over Switzerland-based Algerian Sofiane Sebihi.
The two traded shots in the early rounds and each had their share of success, but as the fight progressed it was Bruwer who proved the stronger man. After a few knockdowns that helped ware down the durable Sebihi, Bruwer eventually finished the job in style by knocking his man out in round eight.
Bruwer, who is also the reigning South African national champion, improved his professional record to 24-5-1 (21), while Sebihi falls to 20-5 (14).
In the evening’s third WBF title fight, up-and-comer Kevin Lerena captured his paid careers first championship when he captured the vacant All Africa Cruiserweight crown in an explosive performance against Ghanaian and West African Champion Ibrahim Labaran.
Lerena was a level above the visitor, and dominated Labaran from the start, knocking him down in the first round and finally stopping him in the second.
With much promise for the future, 21-year-old Lerena takes his record to 8-0 (6), and sends Labaran back to Accra with his third career defeat (10-3, 9 KOs) after ten straight victories.
The impressive WBF Championship tripleheader, dubbed “No Guts, No Glory”, was promoted by Real Steel Promotions, headed by former world-class Super Middleweight Andre Thysse.
www.worldboxingfederation.net
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
