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(SEPT 18) It took all
of 30 seconds last night for Natascha Ragosina to dispatch the
overmatched (and not altogether undernourished) Maria Velichkova of the
Czech Republic. With no time amid the phone-in competitions and ‘co main
events’ (one of which featured a pot-bellied greaser in his forties, who
appeared to be drunk) to show us the full thirty seconds, D:SF cut to
the chase:
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Velichkova, a huge blonde with
teddy-bear ears (the secret love child, perhaps, of the British
Home Secretary?) paws at Ragosina — you can’t call it a jab;
it’s a kind of circular, up-down-and-back movement, like that of
the shaft turning the wheels of a locomotive — and Ragosina
answers with a perfectly executed right cross that catches her
on the left cheek, spinning her round and leaving her doubled
over, as though wanting to vomit. |
The referee, several yards from the
action, looks at the state of her and charges to the rescue, shouting at
Ragosina to hold off. As it is, Ragosina’s follow-up, which he’s too
late to prevent, is merely a looping left intended to turn her stricken
opponent round and set her up for the kill.
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Standing either side of the
diminutive referee as the result is announced, they look like Valkyrie:
Ragosina, with her blonde braids plastered onto her scalp like a helmet
(though her hair’s so abundant it takes two pony tails to keep the rest
out of her face), and Velichkova, who must be over six foot, a
vanquished giantess. Even with her shoulders slumped, she looks far
bigger than her opponent. In her cylindrical aluminium shorts (a dustbin
with the bottom kicked out?), she’s a turkey too big for the oven.
Young, too. Pretty from this angle; but with that far-away look you see
in newsreels of prisoners of war running through the whole Miltonic
fiasco a second time in their minds, as though even that were preferable
to living in the present.
There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of teenagers in eastern Europe
and the Dominican Republic willing to try their luck in German rings
against thoroughbreds like Ragosina and Graf. This one was weeks away
from full fitness. As usual, we were told she was ‘not be
underestimated’; that they were saying great things about her in her
native land.
To judge from her tearful, crestfallen demeanour after the fight, she,
too, had believed them.
In a second women's match, Susianna Kentikian defeated Renata Vesecka in
the fourth round by 58 seconds TKO. |
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