– `New Year’s Beatings’ day of reckoning is here
After talking the talk for days tonight it will be time to walk the walk as Holland’s Entertainment Promotions (HEP) presents ‘New Year’s Beatings’, a four fight professional card which promises to set the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall ablaze.
Over 20 rounds of fistic action are scheduled with Guyana’s heavyweight champion Mitchell Rogers and Anthony Agustin’s scrap being the main course.
But the fight which has been drawing the most attention is the Gwendolyn ‘Stealth Bomber’ O’Neil and Sharon ‘The Spoiler’ Ward showdown.
O’Neil will meet Lindener Ward over six rounds.
Today is exactly one year, two months and 28 days since O’Neil last set foot into the ring when she lost the Women’s International Boxing Association (WIBA) and Women’s International Boxing Council (WIBC) light heavyweight titles to Carlette Ewell.
At yesterday’s press conference held in the studios of the National Communications Network (NCN) Ward and O’Neil each predicted that they would be the one to stand tall at the end of the bout.
In her usual smug way, O’Neil declared that there was no way that Ward could secure an upset win over her and made a solid prediction of a third round knock out.
“Well first of all I’m glad to get this fight and also I didn’t lose my last fight. I was robbed in that fight but everyone knows that Sharon can’t beat me. I ain’t making no predictions but she ain’t passing three rounds. Is up to the third round I will take her,” said O’Neil.
But the Linden resident said that since her trust is in God she cares little of the tough talk that O’Neil is spitting out and said that a win will come her way.
“Well, I don’t fear her at all. I just going out there and do my thing and I know I will come out victorious,” Ward, who seemed to be a woman of few words, said.
The 41-year-old O’Neil, who went into the history books as being Guyana’s first female world champion in 2004, has a ring log of 13 wins from 20 fights. She has six loses and one draw.
Ward has three wins and three losses from seven fights.
In the main event, Agustin promised that the hard-hitting Rogers will certainly have to show what he is made of when the two meet in the square.
Agustin’s first and only tenure in the ring was in February last year at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall against Clyde Williams which ended in a draw.
Williams was also Rogers’s last opponent and the way the fight ended caused Rogers to become one of Guyana’s most feared fighters.
Williams had refused to come out at the start of the second round in a bout promoted by Holland at the Mackenzie Sports Club Ground.
“You know, I know him well, but he doesn’t scare me at all” said Agustin, who said that a challenge was made to him by his work mates at the Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) to win or stay home.
“The people at work say well, if I don’t win, don’t come back to work, so you see, I have something else to fight for because I have to keep my job, so I know what he gives and I will go out there and fight so Rogers should come prepared for a war. I know I will be there, I would not stay away like the last guy, and I could take him down,” Agustin noted.
The undercard bouts will see Guyana’s welterweight champion Iwan ‘Pure Gold’ Azore coming up against Laurex Benn over four rounds and the Trinidad and Tobago based Azore who arrived yesterday believes that it would be a Sunday afternoon stroll getting past Benn.
One of Guyana’s former celebrated amateur champions Clive Atwell will make his professional debut against Charlton Skeete over four rounds.
The card, according to President of the Guyana Boxing Board of Control (GBBC) Peter Abdool, will be the first of his board’s ‘Friday Night Fights’ which will be televised live on NCN.