Mateus “The Beast” Heita successfully defended his World Boxing Association (WBA) Pan African Super Bantamweight title against Jonas Matheus in a tightly contested bout in Walvis Bay on Saturday evening.
The two boxers met in the ‘Together as one: part seven’ boxing tournament which had two title fights scheduled for the evening.
Heita came into the bout as a fan favourite and dominated the first seven rounds as he managed to hurt Jonas in round three, resulting in the challenger holding onto him to see out the round and buy himself time to recover.
However, Jonas made the fight a difficult one for the judges to score as he came back strongly in the second half of the fight using his jab effectively and landing telling punches on his opponent.
With both fighters unsure of the scorecard in the last three rounds, Jonas upped the ante and caused all sorts of problems for his opponent, but it was too little too late as Heita had scored enough points over the 12 rounds to retain his belt.
The three judges scored the fight 119-111, 115-113 and 116-114 for a unanimous decision victory in favour of Heita, much to the dismay of some the spectators, who believed the judges got it wrong.
In the supporting bout, Philipus Shaningwa also scored a unanimous decision win over Julius Sheetheni in their National Super bantamweight title fight.
Other undercard fights saw another local boxer Max Ipinge prevail over Jeroboam Thomas in the Super middleweight bout, while Nestor Thomas stopped Teofelous Nashilongo through a technical knockout.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
