Kevin Sunich

T&T's Ria Ram­nar­ine, the World Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (WBA) In­ter­im and World Box­ing Coun­cil (WBC) Cabofe cham­pi­on, braved a dis­lo­cat­ed left shoul­der as she bat­tled cham­pi­on Et­suko Ta­da of Japan for the WBA ti­tle. The clash un­fold­ed at the Jean Pierre Com­plex in Mu­cu­rapo on Sat­ur­day. Ram­nar­ine sus­tained the in­jury in the sixth round and de­spite be­ing in pain, the T&T war­rior per­se­vered in an ef­fort to ac­com­plish her goal. "I was not about to let an in­jury pre­vent me from achiev­ing my goal. I did not go through all the prepa­ra­tions and come this far to al­low an in­jury to ham­per my chances of claim­ing a world ti­tle and mak­ing my coun­ty proud," said Ram­nar­ine.

"While I was hurt­ing, I sucked it up and used the en­er­gy I got from the large crowd to spur me on." Ram­nar­ine shared that she had ag­gra­vat­ed the in­jury which she was un­der­go­ing treat­ment for since 2008, two weeks ago dur­ing a spar­ring ses­sion. "I ag­gra­vat­ed the in­jury dur­ing a ses­sion, two Sat­ur­days ago at the Bon­nie Cani­no Gym in Mi­a­mi, USA. While the in­jury was ag­gra­vat­ed, I con­tin­ued my ses­sion, and when it was ag­gra­vat­ed in the fight I said to my­self if I could have con­tin­ued when it hap­pened dur­ing my spar­ring, then I could con­tin­ue in this very im­por­tant fight," she said. The T&T fly­weight cham­pi­on said she was ful­ly sat­is­fied with her per­for­mance de­spite the judges' de­ci­sions.

"I fought my best fight in my ca­reer and I know to my heart that I won the bout. My cor­ner knows that, my fam­i­ly knows that, my fans know that, and no one could take any­thing away from me. "I gave my best to rep­re­sent my coun­try and I am proud of what I did. I am so grate­ful for the sup­port I re­ceived from the fans. It was just un­be­liev­able to see the fans op­er­ate the way they did," said the pride of Cen­tral. Match mak­er Boxu Potts speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Sweet Lime Restau­rant, cor­ner Ari­api­ta Av­enue and French Street, Wood­brook yes­ter­day, said he will not be launch­ing a protest, but rather he will push for there to be a re-bid­ding for a re­turn clash.

"We are go­ing to re-bid and I am go­ing to out bid the Japan­ese so that the fight can be held in T&T again. I will not be go­ing to Japan with my fight­er, that is out of the ques­tion," said Potts. He added that if the Japan­ese didn't want to go down that road, then they could keep their belt. "They have placed us in a very good po­si­tion with Sat­ur­day's fight. We now have a num­ber of oth­er op­tions. We have the WBC, the WBO and there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her mov­ing up the weight class, ei­ther to the 108 lbs or the 112 lim­it," he said. Pro­mot­er Gio­van­ni Potts has ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to all his spon­sors, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs which con­tributed just over $619,000 for the pro­mo­tion. He said that with­out the spon­sors the event could not have been pos­si­ble.