It was expected to be a tough fight for local favorite Farid Chebabha, but he put on a convincing performance to defeat Czech visitor Michal Dufek to win the vacant World Boxing Federation (WBF) International Light Welterweight title on Friday night, April 11, in Douai, France.
With a sold-out crowd of 1200 fans at the Salle Theo Bouton, Chebabha used his superior height and reach to keep Dufak at bay, throwing nice combinations and effectively using his jab, while Dufek tried everything he could to get close and land his power-shots.
Dufek ducked, weaved, rushed, anything he could to get under the long arms of Chebabha, but most of his punches missed. At the same time Chebabha picked his punches nicely, and scored more and with cleaner shots. Dufek put in a huge effort, but just couldn’t find much success against the clever-boxing Frenchman.
After ten entertaining rounds, mostly with Chebabha in control but with a hard-trying Dufek making things interesting, all three judges scored in favor of the home-man:
Brahim Ait Aaadi (Belgium) and Jacqui Vaillant (France) both had it 97-93, while Jean-Pierre Van Imschoot (Belgium) scored the bout 100-91. Referee was Christophe Hembert from France.
With his first professional title secured, Farid Chebabha improved his professional record to 14-2-4 (1). Michal Dufek travels back to Prague at 11-6-1 (7).
Promoter was Robert Pantigny and Douai Boxing Club.
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.
