The camp of East London boxer Asemahle Wellem has vowed to lodge a formal complaint with the WBF on the back of their allegation the South African was “blatantly robbed” in Tanzania when his defence of the sanctioning body’s regional title was declared a draw.
Wellem left for the East African country in buoyant mood, confident of inflicting the first professional loss on Tanzanian challenger Selamani Kidunda in their WBF Intercontinental super middleweight title clash in Dar es Salaam at the weekend.
Facing a boxer who at 40 is almost old enough to be his father, Wellem, who celebrated his 23rd birthday last week, dominated the fight, winning almost every round bar the third when he suffered a knock-down.
However, he seemed to put matters beyond doubt when he floored Kidunda in the 12th and last round to put an exclamation mark on his dominance. But he was shocked when one judge scored the fight in favour of the Tanzanian by a 144-113 margin.
The second had the East London boxer winning 114-111, but this was cancelled out by the 113-113 of the third to render the outcome a draw.
Wellem’s manager Siya Zingelwa bemoaned the allegedly biased decision against his boxer and accused the Tanzanian boxing commission of ensuring their local did not lose. Zingelwa said some rounds lasted only 30 seconds instead of three minutes when Wellem was on the verge of forcing stoppage.
“I never witnessed what I saw there before when we were blatantly robbed,” he said.
“It was incredible when they ended some rounds prematurely to save Kidunda.
“We have appealed to the WBF to review the fight because there is no way it was a draw.
When we complained against the biased officiating, we were threatened with guns by the soldiers
— Siya Zingelwa, manager of Asemahle Wellem
“When we complained against the biased officiating, we were threatened with guns by the soldiers.”
Kidunda is a soldier in the Tanzanian military and his colleagues attended the match.
The fight served as an eliminator for the challenge of the fully fledged WBF title, whose president Howard Goldberg recently returned to Cape Town from an overseas trip. The draw was the first blemish on Wellem’s fight record of eight bouts, while Kidunda was spared a loss for the second time in 11 bouts.
Goldberg could not be reached to confirm if he had received the report from the fight supervisor.
Wellem was fighting in Tanzania for the second time, having won the belt when he beat Twaha Kassim in July 2023.
Zingelwa admitted Wellem was dropped hard in the third round and barely survived. However, the South African staged a remarkable fightback to win almost all the rounds and capped his dominance when he floored Kidunda in the 12th.
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