Boxer Ellen Simwaka\u2019s dream to win the vacant African Boxing Union (ABU) bantamweight title was left hanging after her 10-round title contest against South African Simagele Hadebe ended in a draw.<\/p>\n
The fight was staged on Friday at Portuguese Hall in Johannesburg, South Africa.<\/p>\n
Following the draw, there is a high possibility that the pair can meet in a rematch for the third time to fight for the vacant belt.<\/p>\n
Simwaka dominated the first five rounds with superb combinations but she started slowing down after the fifth round.<\/p>\n
From round seven, it was clear that her legs were too tired to continue dominating the fight.<\/p>\n
This allowed Hadebe to fight back and claim a draw during the contest which appeared to be working in the Malawian\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n
Simwaka said she believes she had done enough to win the contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was fighting in other countries, I could have won outright,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One of Simwaka\u2019s managers, Steve \u2018Mawenzi\u2019 Msiska, described the result as fair but said they would ask for a rematch to claim the belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur boxer put up a good performance but the judges thought differently. Anyway, a draw is a fair result. we will return to the drawing board to come back strongly,\u201d Msiska said.<\/p>\n
The first meeting of the two ended in controversial defeat for Simwaka, 20.<\/p>\n
Following the draw, Simwaka\u2019s record is at six wins including four knockouts, three defeats and two draws whereas Hadebe has four wins, including a knockout, a loss and two draws.<\/p>\n
Simwaka was bidding to emulate compatriot Anisha Bashir who won the ABU super lightweight belt in December last year after stopping Consolata Masunga of Kenya in the ninth round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boxer Ellen Simwaka\u2019s dream to win the vacant African Boxing Union (ABU) bantamweight title was left hanging after her 10-round title contest against South African Simagele Hadebe ended in a draw. The fight was staged on Friday at Portuguese Hall in Johannesburg, South Africa. Following the draw, there is a high possibility that the pair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65881,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65875\/revisions\/65881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}