In order to describe what I witnessed on Friday July 3rd, in Leszno I’m going to need several words: bizarre, disrespectful, entertaining, intriguing, uncalled for, over-the-top and many more first come to mind. What millions witnessed around the world live on FightBox HD in the main event of Mercedes-Benz Frączak Boxing Night in a boxing match between Poland’s Przemysław Opalach and Holland’s Nesr Ferizovic, may go down in the annuls of combats sports history as one of the sport’s queerest moments. However, what happened after FightBox’s live transmission ended, could have even topped it.
Due to visa restrictions, the first two opponents scheduled to face Przemysław Opalach (17 - 2, 15KOs) for the vacant WBA Intercontinental Super Middleweight Championship could not make the event. Rumor has it that their visas applications to Poland were rejected or they were denied entry into the country at customs. As the promoters scrambled to find a last minute replacement for Opalach, they settled on Nesr Ferizovic (4 - 0) literally just a day or two before the fight. This would turn out to be a colossal error.
In the first round, behaving as if he were drunk or perhaps just a few sandwiches short of a picnic, Ferizovic began to completely drop his guard, almost begging Opalach to hit him in the face, to which Opalach was more than happy to oblige. By the end of the round you could visibly see the damage on Ferizovic’s face, yet as round two opened up, he continued these antics, in what I thought at the time, was just an attempt to play psychological games with Opalach and irritate him, but as the round went on, it became obvious to me that this is not a game and that there is something seriously wrong with this gentlemen. Either he had a death wish, was high on crack or perhaps was denied adequate attention from his parents as a child and just wanted to show off. Who knows?
As round three began, Ferizovic grabbed Opalach in some sort of a wrestling hold that resembled a guillotine choke. The referee, doing his job, admonished Ferizovic for this. However, instead of apologizing, or simply carrying on with the fight, he actually PUSHED the referee and was disqualified.
Now, being a professional wrestler for over 15 years, this is nothing new to me, but actually seeing it live in a boxing match, is a little much. The referee immediately called for the fight to be stopped and Ferizovic lost by disqualification.
MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF “The FightBox Podcast” on Wednesday, including a post-fight interview with Przemysław Opalach.
As if that weren’t enough, after the fight, they began to raffle off Opalach’s boxing gloves for charity. During the raffle, I was informed that we were already off the air. No count down, no warning, nothing. This is when the fireworks really happened.
Janu Cruz vs. Tomasz Gromadzki
As if things couldn’t possibly get any weirder, after FightBox HD went off the air, I continued to film the final fight of the evening between the Portugal ex-pat Janu Cruz vs. Tomasz Gromadzki on my cell phone, also providing commentary. Words can do this fight no justice. You simply have to see it to believe it for yourself.
Click here to see the full fight video!!
Well, what more can I say? As I already mentioned, being in the professional wrestling business for over 15 years, this kind of stuff is commonplace, but during a kickboxing match? Here’s what I think went down. I think that the promoter or someone in charge, made a decision. He knew that his show was probably not being very well received and that there was an arena full of unsatisfied customers, so he told the fighters to just go out there and put on the most entertaining fight they possibly could to save the show.
So they went out there and tried to do it. After all, this is not uncommon for Janu Cruz. Every fight he’s had in Poland so far to date has had some kind of peculiar element to it including passing out and being taken to the hospital just before his FEN 7 fight with Dawid Świerczyński. But hey, I thoroughly enjoyed it and could certainly appreciate the entertainment aspect of it. Kickboxing and boxing purists will probably poo all over these fights, but for my money, there is no other place I’d rather be than at ringside calling the action during fights like this.
- Daniel Austin (Don Roid)
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