Ragosina Decisions Achieng

By Erik Schmidt: Undefeated WIBF Women’s International Boxing Federation/ WBA female super middleweight champion Natascha Ragosina (19-0, 11 KOs) defeated Kenyan Conjestina Achieng (14-6-3, 7 KOs) by yet another controversial 10-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Maritim Hotel, Magdeburg, in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. And like the last time, the final decision was booed loudly by the German crowd, many of who like myself, felt that Achieng had done enough to get the decision.

However, the judges’ saw it differently, giving Ragosina the victory by the lopsided scores of 97-93, 99-91 and 98-92. I’m not entirely sure which fight the judges’ were watching, because Ragosina looked awful for most of the fight, bouncing around, looking uncoordinated, constantly missing punches and throwing jabs that would stop a foot in front of Achieng, hitting air or the gloves of Achieng.

It didn’t seem to matter to the large German crowd, because they screamed like mad no matter what Ragosina, the home town fighter, did in the ring. I personally scored the fight six rounds to four for Achieng, and I felt that I bent over backwards in giving Ragosina even those rounds, because she looked awful throughout and was never able to generate any power on her weak punches.

I rounds one through four, Achieng dominated the action, pressing the fight constantly and landing the much harder punches to the body and head of Ragosina. For her part, Ragosina moved around the ring, bouncing on her feet and flicking a defensive jab at Achieng, which seemed to have no real purpose.

I mean, it didn’t look to be meant as weapon but rather something to prevent Achieng from getting in range and landing her much bigger shots. Like in the last fight, Ragosina fought scared, leaning back constantly and holding her head as far away from the action as possible to avoid taking shots to the face. Although this was effective in keeping the shorter 5′7″ Achieng from landing as many punches to the head as she might normally would have, it had the additional effect of taking away any ability that Ragosina might have of landing hard punches of her own.

The only time that Ragosina, it seemed, would try and land a hard punch was when Achieng would be caught off balance after lunging forward while trying to throw a big hook, at which point Ragosina would suddenly look brave and throw a short, swatting right hand.

Other than that, Ragosina largely waived her arms in front of her and throwing the weakest punches imaginable. In the 5th round, Ragosina seemed to get the better of the action as Achieng was limited to landing only a handful of big punches.

This enabled Ragosina to jab weakly, perhaps enough to win the round. Ordinarily I wouldn’t give a fighter a round like this, but the German crowd was making a lot of noise and I thought it was probably a round that the judges’ would give to Ragosina.

Personally, it wasn’t nearly enough to win the round, because she did nothing other than throw a few weak jabs in the round. Both fighters took turns missing punches in the 6th, and looked positively awful in the process. Achieng, like usual, landed the much harder punches in the round.

All in all, it was really terrible boxing to watch. Ragosina fought as if she were on a set of tall stilts, never bending her knees and walking stiff-legged around the ring. In rounds eight through ten, Achieng continued pressuring Ragosina constantly, landing the much harder shots and giving her a lot of problems.

Ragosina never changed her game during these rounds, continuing to jab weakly, bend backwards to prevent getting hit and clinching constantly. At some point, the referee should have taken points away from her because she looked to be trying to run out the clock in the fight. Because of that, I couldn’t give her any of the last three rounds and had Achieng easily winning in the end.

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