Frustrated by her failure on
Saturday evening to stop Paulina Cardona on the Herencia de
los Campeones II bill in Panama City, 19-year-old Ogleidys
Suárez wants a rematch. After winning her first three fights
easily inside the distance, the Venezuelan junior featherweight
was faced on Saturday by an opponent with considerably more
experience, who made that experience tell by "suffocating" the
taller girl and making it difficult for her to exploit her
superior reach or get any real leverage into her shots – in much
the same way, incidentally, that her fellow-Colombian Anays
Gutiérrez Carrillo did when frustrating the Argentinian super
bantamweight champions, Marcela Acuña (WBA) and Alejandra
Oliveras (WBC), last year.
"Pretty girls; ugly fight" was the
view of most commentators, with the Colombian – in an old gold
shirt that set off perfectly her darker complexion – guilty as
sin on both counts.
Leonardo Duque Rivero of
Meridiano, which is published in Caracas, felt that
Suárez showed plenty of boxing skill as well as fortitude in
withstanding the non-stop charges of the Colombian, who, in
turn, was equally frustrated by her own inability to score a
knockout. Omar de la Cruz felt Cardona made a mistake in
concentrating all her attacks on the face of her opponent, which
wasn't necessarily the best tactic, given her own disadvantage
in terms of stature; Judge Ignacio Robles, he noted, gave the
fight to Ogleidys (39-37), whilst judges Orlando Sam and Medardo
Villalobos scored it even (38-38), from which he deduced that,
of the two, the Venezuelan came the closer to victory.
But coming 'the closer' to victory
wasn't the objective of either fighter on Saturday evening.
Suárez was complaining yesterday neither about the tactics of
her opponent, which were perfectly legitimate (and, she admits,
made her own task 'very complicated'), nor the result; and if
she'd bitten off, in Cardona, rather more than she could chew,
she had no regrets about that either: "It's fights like these,
ones that challenge you, that force you to develop as a boxer,"
she told La Prensa. All she feels is that, with a couple
more fights under her belt, she could take the Colombian.
Doubtless the Colombian – who,
incidentally, is the younger of the two at 17 – feels she could
take Ogleidys; though we haven't heard her say so yet.
