All quibbles aside, Laem is the man of the hour
When the opening gong sounded last Saturday, it was difficult to find many souls willing to put a wager on a win for Thailand’s Srisaket Sor Rungvisai over champion Ramon ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez of Nicaragua in the WBC super-flyweight title fight.
But who could blame them?
As far as the crowd at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden was concerned, Srisaket, nicknamed ‘Laem’, was an unadvertised commodity.
Gonzalez had entered the title fight as 14-1 favourite and a majority of the crowd were rooting for him to improve his record to 47-0 and take another step towards realising his dream of a 50-0 career.
However, a few moments into the fight, their man was down on the canvas, forcing them to rise from their cherished reverie in a state of shock.
Unfortunately, in the same crowd — and dreaming the same dream — were a few seasoned journalists who also couldn’t take it on the chin.
A bloody 12-round slugfest followed and Srisaket won the fight through a split decision, 114-112, 114-112, 113-113.
Within minutes of Srisaket’s historic victory, the first ever by a Thai boxer at Madison Square Garden, rancorous tweets started doing the rounds and social media went into overdrive.
Things were initially muddled by host broadcaster HBO’s “Final Punchstats”.
HBO graphics suggested that Gonzalez had thrown a total of 1,041 punches of which landed 441 to give him a 43 percent success rate. The count for Srisaket’s blows was 940 thrown and 284 landed (30 percent).
Another HBO graphic detailing power punches also gave Gonzalez a 56 percent success rate compared to Srisaket’s 36 percent.
To make things worse, the Associated Press and ESPN also came up with their counts and announced authoritatively that Gonzales should have been declared the winner.
ESPN’s Dan Rafael tweeted, “We go the cards: 114-112 x 2 and 113-113 for the new champ Sor Rung. I strongly disagree. STRONGLY!” and it became the rallying cry for all those who were shocked by the result.
ESPN Boxing initiated a Twitter poll, asking: “Do you agree with the result of #ChocolatitoRungvisai fight?” Seventy percent of the 1,148 respondents said “No”. That is one side of the story.
More than 10,000 kilometers away in another continent, Srisaket’s compatriots hailed him as a hero with Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha declaring him a “brave” fighter.
In fact, Srisaket and Gonzalez produced a spectacle that one only witnesses very rarely.
It was a close fight and the decision could have gone either way. No one can deny that there were rounds which Srisaket clearly won.
Yes, Gonzalez’s defeat affected quite a few things. He came to the ring last Saturday night with the tag of being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world visibly hanging around his neck. He left the arena with a question mark hanging over that claim.
Chocolatito had this dream of bettering the 49-0 records of Rocky Marciano and Floyd Mayweather Jr, but his tally now stands at 46-1.
The American media had locked their attention on a pre-fight push for a rematch between Gonzalez and Carlos Cuadras.
The Mexican Cuadras did beat David Carmona on points on the same night, but Gonzalez lost, so it seems Srisaket has ruined the desired party.
Cuadras had beaten Srisaket in May 2014 to claim the title which he then lost to Gonzalez in September last year.
While the reaction of certain international media outlets to Srisaket’s victory is somewhat baffling to say the least, how bookmakers arrived at 14-1 odds favouring Gonzalez also remains a big puzzle.
One only needs to glance through Srisaket’s impressive resume.
He is a former world champion and the Thai southpaw went into the fight with a 41-4-1 record with his 38 KOs showing that he has won 83 percent of his bouts without going the distance.
Two days before the bout, Cuadras had warned Gonzalez against underestimating Srisaket.
The bout was on the undercard of the main fight won by unanimous decision by middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin over Daniel Jacobs.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman has summed up the whole thing aptly in a report on the official web site of the governing body.
Commenting on Srisaket and Golovkin’s victories, he wrote: “What a wonderful week it was for boxing and magical night at Madison Square Garden with 2 highly competitive and dramatic fights which went down to the line and resulted in very close decisions and of course controversy. There are so many things that boxing can do to improve but simply zero intentions from a few to agree to change and modernise.
“I enjoyed both fights like I have not done in a long time. Four warriors giving their all to prove supremacy. Both were very close fights, high level of class and competition, in reality, none of the four boxers deserved to lose. Close fights will always bring critics to speak out and to blame boxing and point fingers but I choose to keep the great feeling I have after watching 2 great fights.” That is exactly what needs to be done.
It was a night to savour and boxing aficionados will relive the Srisaket-Gonzalez slugfest for many years to come.
As is almost always the case when humans are involved, the truth varies. If the same ESPN Boxing’s Twitter poll had been promoted in Thailand, millions of respondents would have agreed with the result.
These unofficial computerised counts undertaken by different media outlets have never had any bearing on the official outcomes of fights and neither they can alter the fact that Srisaket is indeed Thailand’s man of the moment.