FEW people in boxing would have earned an easier R180 000 than Simpiwe Vetyeka’s manager did on Saturday.
The Eastern Cape boxer lost his WBA featherweight crown to Filipino star Nonito Donaire in unfortunate circumstances, although he had the consolation of pocketing a purse believed to be in the region of R1.2-million.
His manager, Andile Sidinile, is entitled to 15% of that, which means that considering the fight lasted precisely 12 minutes and one second, he earned R15000 a minute.
That’s an unfair equation, of course, because he would have done much behind-the-scenes work to justify his dough.
Sidinile has done some good work over the years – so how disappointing it was that he shot off his mouth after the defeat, making statements that suggested he was ignorant of boxing’s rules.
Here’s what happened. The fight went to the scorecards after the referee ended it at the start of the fifth round because of a cut on Donaire’s left eye, caused by an accidental clash of heads late in the first round.
There are two permutations for unintentional headbutts.
If the fight is stopped before four rounds are completed, the bout is declared a technical draw. If the fight is stopped after that, they go to the scorecards for a technical decision.
When the referee allowed the fight to continue past the first round, Vetyeka had the advantage – he had uninterrupted vision, Donaire didn’t.
Vetyeka won the second round, but Donaire, a multiple world champion at lower weights, bounced back to rock the champion in the third round and drop him in the fourth.
The referee, who had interrupted the fight a few times to have the ringside doctor inspect the cut, instructed the timekeeper to sound the bell for the start of the fifth, and then he immediately waved the bout over.
The WBA’s rules require incomplete rounds to be scored, even if they’re a second long.
So the three judges scored the fifth round an even 10-10, which would have prejudiced neither fighter; in the end they submitted identical cards of 49-46 for Donaire.
It’s pretty simple, right?
But not for Sidinile. He was furious.
“What amazes us is the fact that round five was scored when it did not even begin,” he was quoted as saying in one of the Sunday papers. “How did they reach scores of 49-46 when only four rounds were completed?”
Had Sidinile been familiar with the WBA regulations, which are available online and which would have been discussed in detail at the standard rules meeting before the fight, he would have known immediately that five rounds had been scored.
Assuming he hadn’t heard the fifth bell sound, he should have realised that a fifth round had been scored and that maybe he had missed something. He could have asked for clarification before jumping to conclusions that seemed to insinuate robbery.
Even if he did not know the WBA’s rules by heart, he should have known the local rules of boxing, which also require incomplete rounds to be scored.
I understand that Sidinile was disappointed, but shooting from the hip is not becoming of a man who appears to have a long and hopefully illustrious future in the sport.
To serve his boxers best, he should brush up on the rules.
