(MAR 10) There has been a good deal of
concern about the future of women's boxing in Germany, after the
boxing queen,
Regina Halmich,
abdicated last year. Judging by Saturday's two world championship
fights in Krefeld, the future looks bright. Neither
Ina Menzer
nor
Alesia Graf
has yet achieved the celebrity status of
Halmich, but their performances in the ring this weekend, fully
complied with the standards Halmich has set. Both produced very
entertaining fights against very good opposition.
Ina Menzer (19-0-0) faced Sandy Tsagouris (7-0-0) for
the WIBF and WBC Featherweight title. This was a match between two
technical well founded boxers, who gave the crowd a high quality and
very entertaining fight. Both fighters made a cautious start to the
fight, but after a relatively slow first round, there was plenty of
fireworks in the following rounds.Menzer clearly had
respect for Tsagouris' punching power and kept her guards high, but
was punished by some very good body punches from the Canadian.
Menzer received a deep cut over her right eye by an unintentional
clash of heads in round 5, but her cutman managed to stop the blood
between rounds 5 & 6.
Tsagouris did her best to open
the cut was, but was unsuccessful and Menzer weathered the storm,
and managed to gain control in the latter rounds with the exception
of round 10, that Tsagouris won clearly. The judges scored the very
close fight 96-94, 97-93 & 97-93. After the Tsagouris team, told the
press that they had been robbed, and that it is impossible to win on
points in Germany.
The second world championship fight
of the evening saw Alesia Graf (19-1-0) face late
substitution Hagar Shmoulefeld Finer (16-5-3) with the WIBF
and GBU Super Flyweight titles at stake. Shmoulefeld had fought for
the WIBF Inter-Continental Super Flyweight title in her native
Israel only 8 days ago. She won the title by TKO in the 8th round
over Doris Köhler. This fight also turned out to be a real crowd
pleaser.
It did not match the previous
fight as far technical standards is concerned, but it made up for
that in sheer fighting will by both boxers. It was very much
toe-to-toe action, where Graf came out on top due to her larger
repertoire of punches. Shmoulefeld fought a very close fight against
Halmich, but Graf seemed to have much less problems with the game
Israeli. No doubt, boxing 8 rounds a week earlier, did not do much
good for Shmoulefeld's chances in this fight. The fight was scored
98-92, 98-93 and 97-93. Smoulefeld said in a post fight interview,
that she was going for a knock-out as she did not believe it
possible to win on points in Germany, but her tactics backfired. She
readily admitted, that Graf won the fight.