By Jim Dower: Chinese star Zou Shiming’s career is up in the air right now due to a left eye problem that he reportedly suffered while on a flight from Beijing, China. Shiming is said to have lost sight out of his left completely.
When healthy, Shiming is one of the most talented fighters in boxing. He has amazing skills. The eye injury is terrible news for a fighter that still has a lengthy career ahead of him if he can come back from this setback.
The 36-year-old Shiming is a former WBO flyweight champion and 2-time Olympic gold medalist from China. There’s talk that Shiming could be suffering from a detached retina in his left eye, according to Fight News.
Shiming was recently stopped in the 11th round in his last fight against Sho Kimura on July 28 in Shanghai, China. That was a big upset, as the 29-year-old Kimura had fought mostly in Japan his entire career, and he’s never mixed it up against anyone of Shiming’s class.
In his defeat to Kimura, Shiming lost his WBO World flyweight title. Shiming was hoping to get a rematch with Kimura to avenge his loss and win back his WBO flyweight title. But with the eye injury, Shiming’s career is up in the air right now. The rematch with Kimura isn’t even a consideration at this point. It’s now all about Shiming having his eye problem repaired so he can regain sight in his left eye.
Shiming had recently turned his career around following a disappointing 12 round unanimous decision loss to IBF World flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng on March 7, 2015. Shiming looked good early on in that fight, dropping Ruenroeng in the 2nd round. But in the second half of the contest, Ruenroeng came on strong and used his superior punching power to wear down Shiming and ground out a fairly one-sided 12 round decision by the scores 116-111, 116-111 and 116-111. To Shiming’s credit, he bounced back from the loss to Ruenroeng to win his next 3 fights in beating Nathan Santana Coutinho, Jozef Ajtai and Prasitsak Phaprom.
Shiming captured gold medals in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics for China. Shiming also fought in the 2004 Olympics, but he was eliminated by Yan Bathelemy of Cuba in losing by a 29-17 score.
Shiming was signed by Top Rank after he turned pro in 2013, and they had hopes of turning him into a star. Shiming seemed to be heading towards stardom until losing to Ruenroeng, and then suffering a second career defeat to Kimura.