Cecilia Brækhus (27-0, 7 KOs) retained her WBC, WBA, WBO & IBF Female World Welterweight titles with a unanimous points victory over IBF mandatory challenger Jennifer Reztke (15-1-2, 9 KOs) at the Falconer Hall, at the Radisson Blu in Copenhagen.
Brækhus once again proved why she is the pound-for-pound number one with a dominant display against her German opponent. ‘The First Lady’ started strongly and looked likely to stop Retzke before injuring her foot in the third-round. Despite the injury, Brækhus fought on to claim a clear victory, with the judges scoring the fight 100-90, 100-90 & 98-92.
‘’I would like to thank all the fans that travelled to Copenhagen to support me,’’ said Brækhus. ‘’I thought I could have got the stoppage but I injured my foot and had to adjust my tactics. I was unlucky, but fortunately the injury doesn’t appear to be serious. Retzke was a tough opponent but I think I showed, even with one foot, that I’m a class above.’’
Said promoter Nisse Sauerland: ‘’This was an entertaining fight and a great advert for women’s boxing. Cecilia continues to impress, she seems to get better and better with every fight. Full credit to Retzke, she came to fight, but was ultimately outclassed by Cecilia, who must now be considered the greatest female boxer of all time.’’
In the co-featured Swedish main event, Klara Svensson (15-0, 5 KOs) successfully defended her interim WBC World Light Welterweight title against Lucia Morelli (18-5, 8 KOs). The 27 year-old outworked the tough Italian and at the final bell was ahead on all the judges’ scorecards (100-90, 100-91 & 99-91).
‘’Morelli was a tough opponent,’’ said Svensson. ‘’I was pleased with my performance and happy to beat such an experienced fighter. This is another step in the right direction for me and another step towards dominating the light welterweight division. I’m ready for the big fights in 2015.’’
In the evening’s third championship fight, 22 year-old Norwegian super middleweight Tim-Robin Lihaug (9-1, 5 KOs) captured the vacant WBO Youth World title in an entertaining battle with George Beroshvili (14-4-2, 7 KO).
‘’I felt that I was always in control of the fight,’’ said Lihaug. ‘’Beroshvili is a good boxer so I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. I had to keep calm and stick to my game plan, and that’s exactly what I did. It is a great honour to win the youth world title. This is the beginning of my journey to become a world champion!’’
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.
