Kevin Sunich

A packed crowd at the Jean Pierre Com­plex went home dis­ap­point­ed on Sat­ur­day night when it was an­nounced that the World Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (WBA) ti­tle fight be­tween chal­lenger T&T's Ria Ram­nar­ine and WBA min­i­mum weight cham­pi­on Et­suko Ta­da of Japan, was scored as a ma­jor­i­ty draw. Af­ter the ten-round con­test, judges David Singh (Pana­ma) and Harold Lau­rans (Cu­ra­cao) scored the fight 95-95, while Raul Nieves (Puer­to Ri­co) scored it 97-93 in favour of Ram­nar­ine. The full house which in­clud­ed a hand­ful of Japan­ese sup­port­ers got their mon­ey's worth, as the main event of the six-bout card lived up to fight ex­pec­ta­tions. Ram­nar­ine, the WBA In­ter­im and World Box­ing Coun­cil (WBC) Cabofe cham­pi­on, fought the fight of her life, show­ing great im­prove­ment from her pre­vi­ous fights, and de­spite not tak­ing the ti­tle, won the hearts of the hun­dreds of fans who showed up.

The pride of Ch­agua­nas showed her five-week stint at the Bon­nie Cani­no Gym in Mi­a­mi was fruit­ful as her over­all ap­proach was more pur­pose­ful. The first two rounds were ag­gres­sive as both fight­ers tried to gain the ear­ly mo­men­tum. Ram­nar­ine, with the crowd be­hind her, land­ed a cou­ple of sound com­bi­na­tions while evad­ing a num­ber of Ta­da's punch­es. Ta­da en­joyed a good third round land­ing a few com­bi­na­tions but Ram­nar­ine ral­lied as her con­fi­dence grew in rounds four and five. Ta­da re­ceived a cut over her right eye from an ac­ci­den­tal head butt in round six and Ram­nar­ine sought to take ad­van­tage of the sit­u­a­tion, land­ing some sol­id com­bi­na­tions.

How­ev­er with blood stream­ing down her face, the Japan­ese be­came more ag­gres­sive and went in search of a knock out, at­tack­ing Ram­nar­ine from the start of the sev­enth round. The T&T cham­pi­on re­spond­ed well and the fight­ers went toe to toe, throw­ing a se­ries of com­bi­na­tions, that brought the crowd to its feet. Ta­da who ap­peared to be be­hind on the judges score­cards, took her ag­gres­sion to an­oth­er lev­el, run­ning across the ring to meet Ram­nar­ine and was on­ly on the back foot af­ter the In­ter­im cham­pi­on re­tal­i­at­ed with some quick punch­es. The fi­nal round saw Ram­nar­ine land­ing some good punch­es, which did not faze the vis­i­tor who kept ad­vanc­ing. With the crowd sens­ing a win for the home girl, the chants got loud­er and Ram­nar­ine, seem­ing­ly sat­is­fied with her per­for­mance, start­ed to be more eva­sive as the fi­nal bell sound­ed.

A tired look­ing Ram­nar­ine was hoist­ed by her head coach Barath Ra­moutar as the camp thought she had pulled off the vic­to­ry. When the de­ci­sion was fi­nal­ly an­nounced, the crowd was left dis­ap­point­ed. The T&T fight­er and her of­fi­cials im­me­di­ate­ly left the ring and made their way out of the are­na, not even wor­ry­ing to take the manda­to­ry drug test which was re­quest­ed by the WBA. Ra­moutar said the re­sult was not a fair one. "Every­body saw it, Ria won eight out of the ten rounds and it is un­fair for the judges not to give her the win," said Ra­moutar. Potts on the oth­er hand said he will be ap­peal­ing the de­ci­sion since he felt it was rob­bery. "This is blind rob­bery, I knew this would have hap­pened. The board want­ed this and this is ex­act­ly what they got. They were against Ria from the start and I hope they feel good for what they did to her," said Potts. Potts said a re-match is on the cards but will not be held in T&T or Japan.