In front of the watchful eyes of thousands of fans around the world, the Cuban Frank Sánchez succumbed to a knockout against the German Agit Kabayel and squandered a real opportunity to keep his name in high-level boxing events like the one experienced this Saturday in Saudi Arabia.
With both of their undefeated records on the line, Sánchez (now 24-1, 17 KOs) and Kabayel (25-0, 17) stepped into the ring ready to become the mandatory challenger for the World Boxing Council's super heavyweight division. However, the European fighter utilized his weapons better and left his opponent breathless in the seventh round of the bout.
The so-called "The Cuban Flash" hit the canvas twice in the mentioned round, and the second time - at 2:23 minutes - he could not catch his breath to stand up before the referee's count.
According to the statistics from the specialized site Compubox, the winner surpassed his opponent in every aspect: he landed 110 out of 276 punches thrown (39.9%), while the Cuban boxer barely managed to connect 47 times out of 176 attempts (26.7%).
At 31 years old, Sánchez missed a golden opportunity to elevate his career and will have to overcome multiple challenges in order to make the dream of fighting for a universal title come true.
The defeat, moreover, sparked diverse comments on social media. Not a few of his followers questioned how he approached the fight and the strategy of his team at the Kingdom Arena in Riad.
Considered at some point the new face of professional boxing in Cuba, the born in the eastern province of Guantánamo will now have to wait for his handlers' work to clean up the bad image offered in the Middle East.
The exponent of the art of Fistiana left his country in July 2016, along with Olympic medalist Yampier Hernández. "There is no specific reason, I just want to be a professional and I couldn't do that in Cuba," he told Diario de Cuba.
In the same card as Sánchez-Kabayel, Oleksandr Usyk (22-0, 14) defeated the British Tyson Fury (34-1-1, 24) to become the unified heavyweight champion for the first time since Lennox Lewis.
The Ukrainian, still without a single loss in his record, took home all the belts in the category by split decision (115-112, 113-114, and 114-113) and a rematch is expected next October.
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