Natascha Ragosina Defeats Conjestina Achieng

By Erik Schmidt: WIBA Women’s International Boxing Association super middleweight champion Natascha Ragosina (18-0, 11 KOs) (among many others) defended her titles with an uninspiring safety-first 10-round unanimous decision win over challenger Conjestina Achieng (14-5-3, 7 KOs) on Friday night at the Rundturm Arena, Cuxhaven, in Niedersachsen, Germany. The final decision was booed loudly by the German fans, many who felt that Achieng had won the fight with her more aggressive fighting style and her much harder punches landed.

I’m in agreement with the majority of the ring side crowd, because Ragosina did little other than bounce around the ring, throwing jabs that hit nothing, and running from Achieng for the entire fight. Ragosina, 32, never even tried to stop and fight for any length of time. Instead, she ran almost continuously, and would fight on her back foot when pinned up against the ropes by Achieng, leaning way back to try and avoid getting hit. It looked altogether that she was afraid to engage Achieng with any meaningful punches and was mostly focused with trying to avoid contact as much as possible. This meant that instead of throwing punches to connect, Ragosina seemed more concentrated on throwing short jabs that looked more intent on keeping her away than on connecting

The first round had almost no actual punches landed, although it was no fault of Achieng, who stalked a constantly moving Ragosina all around the ring, trying to connect with punches on the perpetually moving target. Ragosina spent a lot of time with useless bouncing which seemed to serve no real purpose. I’m not sure if this was something taught to her by her trainer, but if it was, she needs to stop with this pointless exercise. While bouncing, she was unable to throw punches or defend properly and only succeeded in looking silly and more than a little uncoordinated. She already had a huge height advantage at 5’11″ over her shorter 5’7″ opponent, so if the bouncing was meant to make her get more height, it wasn’t needed. Altogether, Ragosina landed two jabs in the round, spending the majority of the time running, poising and bouncing up and down.

Ragosina continued running in the 2nd round, moving from side to side and acting as if she were trying to run out the clock in the round. She would throw punches while running around the ring, but few, if any, landed because of her constant motion. It was really bad boxing and many of the fans in the audience started to boo and look more than a little unhappy with her non-performance.

In rounds three through seven, Achieng, from Kenya, landed the far bigger shots as she was able to track Ragosina down and hit her with big punches to the head and body. Ragosina would attempt to lean way back to avoid the shots but was still hit in the face and body by the big punches. In the same leaning back way, Ragosina landed a small number of very weak jabs in each of these rounds. It wasn’t nearly enough to win any of the rounds; however, considering what she was being hit with was much harder. At the same time, Ragosina continued to run around the ring and look for all practical purposes as if she didn’t want to fight. I’ve seen her fight on several other occasions and she’s always been much more aggressive than this in the ring, looking to want to take the fight to her opponent. However, for some reason, she just looked afraid and didn’t want to engage Achieng. The 7th round was completely one-sided with Achieng hitting Ragosina with a high number of power shots to the head and body.

The 8th round was perhaps the most exciting round of the fight with Achieng forcing Ragosina up against the ropes and nailing her with big shots. Ragosina broke from her timid fighting style and fired back with shots that landed to the head and arms of Achieng. It looked as if Ragosina got the better of the action due to her ability to lean her backwards and keep from getting hit in the head. It looked bad, however, like watching a schoolyard fight rather than a professional boxing match with two trained fighters, as Ragosina would continue punching even through her head and upper torso was leaning way backwards, letting her only throw flailing arm punches often with her eyes closed.

In the 9th and 10th rounds, Ragosina finally started to fight like I’ve seen her in the past, using her excellent jab and right hand to land effectively to the head of the shorter Achieng. She picked her off expertly as she would come forward and tag her with sweeping rights and left hands. It’s unfortunate that Ragosina waited this long to start fighting, because she appeared to lose most of the other rounds of the fight.

After the final decision was announced giving Ragosina the victory, the crowd booed and someone threw something in the ring. This caused Security to usher Ragosina to the corner of the ring to try and protect her from any more incoming debris.

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