How rated Vetyeka lost to Dlamini
he had used a drip to rehydrate to regain the weight he had lost while boiling down to make the featherweight limit.
Vetyeka first failed to fall within the required limit at the premedical of the fight and had to strip comp naked before succeeding with the final weigh-in.
He had been fighting as a featherweight for which he won the WBA and IBO crowns to add to the IBO title he won in the bantamweight.
He said he was surprised how weak he felt after pumping himself up with a drip to rehydrate. “Bottom line is as an old boxer I need to take responsibility of what happened and not try to blame someone else,” he said.
While brushing aside perceptions of a weight struggle Vetyeka said he was always squeezing himself down to the featherweight and the sacrifice had finally taken its toll.
He will now jump a division to campaign in the lightweight division.
Even if he had beaten Dlamini and qualified for the final he said he was going to move up anyway.
“I had planned to fight in the featherweight for the last time in the S4 but now my loss to Dlamini has convinced me to move north immediat he said.
Despite having turned 37 last month, Vetyeka insists that he still has plenty of boxing left in his body.
He admits that he may have been written off after losing to Dlamini but added “that is how I like it. In fact people think my career is over but I will prove them wrong”.
The loss to Dlamini was his fourth in 33 bouts in a career spanning 15 years, which never achieved much despite his abundance of talent.
A smart boxer, Vetyeka’s main achilles heel has always been inconsistency bordering on arrogance.
For instance he allowed himself to be beaten by Klaas Mboyane although there was no comparison between them in talent.
He gathered himself to shock Indonesian legend Chris John to win the WBA and appeared to be finally on course to realise his potential.
While he was favoured to beat Dlamini, he admits that the loss was painful to comprehend.
“I felt so bad but now I can safely say I am over it. At least I know what happened and for two weeks my body felt numb. In fact had I fought other featherweight boxers on the night I would have been knocked out.”
He says his Irish manager Gary Hyde was currently busy organising a fight for him.