Tete camp uppercuts critics
Narvaez real deal, insists chief trainer
ZOLANI Tete’s chief trainer Loyiso Mtya has blasted the media for labelling his charge’s world title defence against Omar Narvaez as boring.
Tete retained his WBO bantamweight title in a lacklustre fight against Narvaez of Argentina at SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland this past Saturday.
The fight was so one-sided that not a single judge gave the 42-year-old challenger a round with all voting for Tete 120-108 across the board.
Some media sections accused Narvaez of coming solely for the payday as he did against Filipino Nonito Donaire back in 2011 when he challenged for the same title he fought Tete for.
In the fight against Donaire, Narvaez kicked in his survival mode from the first bell eliciting condemnation from the media.
He repeated the habit again against Tete subjecting the Mdantsane boxer to a fight that was described as a snoozer by several international boxing publications.
Several media centres even suggested that Narvaez should not even be paid his purse for the fight as he never tried to make a fight of it.
But Mtya denied that the fight was lacklustre, instead opting to blame the media for not recognising Tete’s talent against a world-class fighter.
He argued that Tete fought a sublime bout and to describe the fight as boring was off the mark.
“Narvaez came with world-class credentials having been a two-divisional world champion and for Zolani to beat him is a major achievement,” said Mtya.
He said the media expected Tete to knock out Narvaez in similar fashion he did when he knocked out Siboniso Gonya in 11 seconds to set a new world record in November last year.
Interestingly Mtya was not part of Tete’s team when the boxer achieved the feat, having fallen out with the boxer’s manager Mla Tengimfene.
This after Tengimfene said he would look for a world-class trainer to beef up Tete’s technical team, a move Mtya said was not communicated with him.
The duo reconciled with Mtya resuming his duties as chief trainer in time to be part of the team preparing Narvaez.
Mtya insisted that the fight against Narvaez showed that Tete was a complete boxer who knows how to handle any style presented by any rival.
“For instance, Narvaez opted to run but Zolani never deviated from the fight strategy which was to use his jab and then go to the body,” he said.
Mtya’s remarks are contrary to what he had earlier stated that he wanted to make Tete a bit more offensive to generate interest in his fights.
This was one of the laments when his relationship with Tengimfene appeared to have soured.
“My next goal was to make Zolani a more offense-minded boxer until this fallout,” Mtya said back then.
Meanwhile, Tete team revealed that he suffered a hand injury in the fight against Narvaez in the fourth round. The boxer is yet to have the injury examined to determine its seriousness.