01.09.07 – By Colin Nathan: By far the best performance of his career, Mzonke Fana retained his IBF Jnr. Lightweight “World” Championship by knocking out challenger, Javier Alvarez from Argentina in the 9th round in a fight that displayed the South African using excellent boxing skills.
Fana, an absolute credit to South African Boxing, was considered to be washed up and on a road to no-where after he was slaughtered for a WBC title Challenge in 2005, getting iced in 2 rounds against the great Marco Antonio Barrera.
After putting together 3 mediocre wins, including an IBF title elimination bout against another Argentine fighter, Roberto Arrieta, all on points, he caused an upset by winning the title off of another South African, Malcolm Klassen in April this year on a split decision in Cape Town.
Let me explain the Jinx of this title, South African, Cassius Baloyi fought and beat Manuel Medina for this title that was vacant last year, Baloyi in turn lost the title in his first defense against Australian, Gary St.Clair, who in turn lost it in his first defense against South African, Malcolm Klassen, who in turn too lost it to Mzonke Fana also in his first defense!
Alvarez, rated no.12 by the IBF, had only won 1 of his last 3 starts, but had been in with world class opposition, and caused an upset in 2005 in England, when he won the WBU Super-featherweight (Jnr.Lightweight) title by stopping Michael Gomez in 6rounds.
Coming out in the first round, Fana started straight away looking to establish his jab and did a good job of keeping Alvarez at the end of it. It was a very sharp Fana who won the round hands down on my card.
Alvarez decided to press the action more in the 2nd round and keep the action up close and tried to nullify Fana’s jab by using this tactic, but to his surprise and many people watching the fight, including myself, Fana started beating him to the punch and outworking him on the inside. Fana is not really known as an in-fighter and would prefer to keep the fight at long range, but against Alvarez he was on top form, using a devastating right uppercut, which was followed by a left hook to the head and body.
From the 4th round onwards it become clear that whichever tactic Alvarez used, be it from long range or up-close, he was simply coming off second best.
He did have success occasionally with catching Fana with some well timed left hooks, but Fana whose chin has been questioned before, took them well, and each time came back firing with sharp jabs or good counter shots of his own.
Going into the 6th round, Alvarez had his nose bleeding from all the uppercuts that
Fana was raking in on the inside.
The 8th round on my score-card was the only round that I managed to score even with Fana completely dominating the previous 7 due to his work-rate and pin-point punching, the 8th saw having Alvarez land some good left hooks to Fana’s head, and had Fana missing with quite a few of his jabs.
Going into the 9th, it was evident that Alvarez needed a knock-out to win this one, and midway through the round both fighters were fighting an in-fight when Fana threw a wicked left hook to the body, which made Alvarez wince in agony, he was on his way down, when another shot this time a grazing right hand to his head helped him decide that he could not get up and beat the count.
A great performance from our South African “World” champion against a man who had only been stopped twice before against the likes of Claudio Victor Martinet (2001) and Jorge Barrios (2002).
Fana takes his record to 27 wins(10kos) and 3 losses while Alvarez drops to 34 wins(16kos), 7 losses and 1 draw.
On the under-card, South African Bantamweight champion, Simpiwe Vetyeka had little to beat in Ebenezer Tumane, knocking him out in three one sided rounds that saw him defend his South African title for the 6th time.