By Erik Schmidt: Undefeated WIBF Women’s International Boxing Federation featherweight and WBC Female featherweight champion Ina Menzer (21-0, 9 KOs) destroyed her American challenger Stacey Reile (8-1, 3 KOs) with a series of big right hands on Saturday night, knocking her flat with a devastating right hand in the 2nd round. Referee Daniel Van de Wiele immediately stopped the bout at 1:39 after seeing how badly Reile had been hurt by the knockdown. The fight started off slowly in rounds one and two, with Reile for the part in control of the fight using her faster hands to land effectively with combinations.
Menzer, 27, originally from Kazakhstan and now living in Germany, seldom let her hands go in the first couple of rounds, instead jabbing and looking for openings. In the third round, the fight continued to be controlled by Reile, that is, until the final seconds of the round when Menzer unloaded with a huge right hand that landed to the side of Reile’s head, staggering badly and almost causing her to go down. The referee did something I’d never seen before in a fight, he grabbed a hold of Reile to steady her, and actually prevented what very likely would have been a knockdown from occurring. Like I said, I’ve never seen a referee prevent a knockdown and it seemed odd, and out of place for the referee to do this. All I could think is that he may have forgotten himself, and lost track that he was in a title fight with boxers and not just on the street, trying to help a person that was in danger of falling.
Reile, 34, showed immediately that she was the both the quicker and more aggressive fighter in the first round, using repeated jabs and left-right combinations to land against Menzer. For almost the entire round, Menzer looked out of place, as if she wasn’t sure what to do with Reile, to cope with her speed advantage. Nothing much changed in the 2nd round, though Menzer did catch Reile on one occasion with a good right hand as he was attempting to throw a shot. However, that was the extent of what Menzer did in the round, for Reile immediately went back on attack with her blazing fast combinations and this seemed to shut Menzer down for the remainder of the round.
Menzer began blocking a lot of Reile’s shots in the 3rd round, looking as if she was figuring out the timing of Reile’s punches and making adjustments to block the incoming fire. However, Reile still was badly outworking Menzer, and it didn’t matter if some of Reile’s shots were being picked off, because she was throwing them in a scattergun style of attack. As the round wound down, it looked as if Reile was going to be putting another round in her bank, but everything suddenly changed when seemingly out of nowhere Menzer opened up with her hardest punch of the fight – a big right hand that landed with a crashing thud to the side of Reile’s head, causing her to stagger and almost fall.
As I mentioned, the referee grabbed her and steadied her to prevent her from falling down. The clock ran out in the round just as this was happening, thus preventing Menzer from trying to finish off Reile. In the 4th round, the fight had a totally different look to it as now Menzer was the one that was throwing most of the punches, hitting Reile with hard jabs and left hands. Around a minute into the round, Menzer, as if remembering the effect that her right hand had had on Reile at the end of the 3rd round, unloaded two consecutive powerful right hands, the second of which was a tremendous shot that landed to the side of Reile’s head, sending her to the canvas on her back. The referee Daniel Van de Wiele then promptly stopped the fight at 1:39 while Reile was still down.
It looked as if Reile was fine, that she could have gotten up and continued fighting, but due to the devastating look of the knockdown, the referee perhaps figured that she would be in trouble if the fight had continued. Reile afterwards was sporting a large red swelling under he left eye from the right hands of Menzer in the round.
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