After an absence of several years,
Sina Dümer of Berlin will be making a comeback on the SES card
on the 19th August in the Eissportehalle in Halle, when she
fights Galina Gumliiska for the GBU World title she herself held
in 2002 and 2003. According to her web site,
www.sina-duemer.com, Dümer is
set to attend the Sport Show Berlin on the weekend of the 19th
and 20th August, though how she plans to do this and fight in
Halle on the Saturday evening is not clear.
With 7 wins (though
only one by KO) in 9 fights, the German should have the edge on
her Bulgarian opponent, who was managed no better in 17 outings,
losing her last two fights to Ina Menzer and Jane Couch
respectively by TKO. Parts of the bill, in which Norman Schuster
will be fighting Turgay Uzun for the German middleweight title,
will be televised live by D:SF on the Astra satellite.
Ina Menzer's opponent for the
upcoming "Universum Champions' Night" in Magdeburg will be
Patricia Alejandra Quirico of Argentina, the UBC
super-bantamweight champion. Neither woman, it must be said,
impressed in her most recent outing, with Menzer taken the
distance by Zarika Njeri of Kenya and Quirico doing no better on
home soil against the brave but inexperienced Renata Cristina
Ferreira of Brazil, whom even Argentinian fans saluted as the
real victrix. Quirico, who will be giving away 19 years to the
WIBF champion, has an impressive enough record, 10-4-0 with a
57% KO rate, but has usually failed against quality opponents.
Her meeting on the 9th September with the
hard-hitting Khazakh should tell us whether Marcela Acuña's jibe
("Quirico's an aerobics instructor and that's all she'll ever
be") is justified or not.
Alesia Graf's opponent on the same
bill will be Reka Krempf [13-7-3 (5 KOs)] of Hungary, whilst the
opponents of Ragosina, Sahin and Kentikian have yet to be named.
Ragosina's manager, Ulf Steinforth, said yesterday that he and
Laila Ali's management are agreed in principle that the two
should meet – hopefully before the end of the year – though the
details and venue have still not been decided. Neither woman
will want to trip up in the meantime, so Ragosina's opponent in
Magdeburg on the 9th September is unlikely to pose
any greater threat to her unbeaten record than Ali's opponent in
South Africa on the 5th August, whom she has already
kayoed once, does to hers.
Halmich, whose defence of her WIBF
title against Ria Ramnarine will be the main event of the "Universum
Champions' Night", has announced that she will be retiring
before her 31st birthday in November 2007 and sees
the Magdeburg event – in which 7 of the 10 contests will be
between women – as a way of sharing the spotlight with her
successors. Halmich has proved a bigger draw in recent years
than most, if not all, of Germany's male boxers and her fights
have consistently attracting the highest viewing figures.
With Silke Weickenmeier apparently out of the picture, the heir to
Halmich's title of Quotenkönigin (i.e. "Nielsen Queen")
will almost certainly be one of the fighters on view in
Magdeburg: Ragosina, I expect, if she defeats Ali and Menzer if
she fails.
In the light of her devastating
performance at the weekend against Martha Leticia Arévalo – a
victory achieved in 80 seconds, where Jackie Nava, ranked #1 at
the time in the world, had taken 8 rounds – Zulina Muñoz's
manager, Mauro Ayala, is now looking beyond the borders of
Mexico for her opponents; and whilst nothing has been finalized,
the talk is of her featuring on the undercard of the Morales-Pacquiao
bill on the 18th November in the Thomas and Mack
Center in Las Vegas against what Ayala promises will be a
"world-ranked" opponent. Before that, though, he wants her to
fight twice more in her native land: once in her home state of
México and once in Tijuana (Baja California).
After what
Maerkische Allgemeine called
a "hard-hitting duel in which tactics and defence went out the
window" and Per-Ake Persson of
Knock-Out.Dk
"a heated fight that brought the house down", the judges
were unable to separate the two Berlin super-welterweights
Jasmin Oflas and Malina Perplies on the "Friday Night Fights IV"
bill in Potsdam on the 15th July.
In the view of the promoters,
however, "a fairer result would have been a narrow win for Oflas",
and it is Oflas who is being retained for "Friday Night Fights
V" on the 8th September, where the venue will once again be the
Blue Box, Heinrich-Mann-Allee. Oflas's opponent has not yet been
named.
