Boxing News Boxing News
By Ben Lettman
Victories For Africa’s Finest
It was a great night for African boxing at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London. Along with Ajose Olusegun becoming the new Commonwealth Light Welterweight Champion, there were points victories for fellow Nigerian Tony Salam and South African Tshifwa Munyai, respectively.
Munyai, fighting at featherweight instead of bantamweight, beat Rugby’s Harry Ramogoadi over eight rounds.
The Commonwealth Bantamweight Champion Munyai landed some ferocious head and body shot combinations. He hurt Ramogoadi badly in the fourth and fifth rounds and his unrelenting pressure put Ramogoadi on the back foot throughout.
But Ramogoadi rallied well in the latter stages of the fight. He caught Munyai with his own punches and comfortably managed to survive.
Munyai took the contest on points after eight rounds and improves to 14-0 (8) while Ramogoadi falls to 18-8-2 (4).
Munyai has now picked up his fourth victory in England. He is no stranger to these shores as he already holds stoppages against British bantamweight champion Martin Power (twice) and Lee Haskins.
Light heavyweight Tony Salem slickly outboxed durable journeyman Nick Okoth over four rounds. After a cagey opener, Salem settled down in the second round and scored a knockdown with a beautiful right hook.
Okoth bravely rose to his feet but he was completely outclassed by the impressive Salem in the next two rounds.
Salem won on points after four rounds and goes to 5-0 (2) while Okoth drops to 4-13-4 (1).
Salem has already mentioned that he would like to fight the winner of Tony Oakey vs. Brian Magee.
But realistically, he needs to fight over six and eight rounds before he steps up to a scheduled twelve round fight.
Unbeaten welterweight Scott Woolford maintained his perfect record with a narrow points win over Tyrone McInerny.
Woolford comfortable won the first three rounds and looked to have the fight wrapped up. But McInerny connected with a huge right hand that sent Woolford sprawling into the ropes. He was then sent to the ground but the referee did not score it as a knockdown.
Woolford literally hung on for the victory to improve his record to 4-0 (0) while McInerny goes to 2-1-2 (2).
Also on the bill, Gary Woolcombe, 23-1 (8), got back on the winning track with a fourth round stoppage over Anthony Young, 4-3 (0), heavyweight John McDermott, 22-3 (15), prepared for his upcoming clash with Scott Gammer via a second round finisher over Luke Simpkin, 9-27-3 (7), light middle Sam Webb, 7-1 (3), made it three in a row with a four round points win over Ben Hudson, 7-33-1 (1), and lightweight Lee Cook improves to 9-0-1 (3) with a Rom Krauklis, 2-6 (1).
