Advertisement
Advertisement
Boxing
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Emanuel Williams is counted out by the referee after his embarrassing first-round knockout against John Rincon. Photo: Twitter

Is this the worst professional boxer in the world? Emanuel Williams gets pummelled in the first round of his debut bout

  • Emanuel Williams was making his professional debut over the weekend in Oklahoma City
  • The 19-year-old from Louisiana suffers a first-round knockout after boxing erratically
Boxing

Top Rank has organised some of the world’s best fights but the renowned organisation came in for stinging criticism for allowing an incompetent professional to be featured over the weekend.

Emanuel Williams was making his professional debut against fellow American John Rincon and the fight turned into a complete farce with the 20-year-old Williams unable to even protect himself, let alone looked as he had any boxing skill as he was knocked out one minute and 24 seconds into the opening round of the four-round lightweight contest.

Emanuel Williams goes crashing down to the canvas by John Rincon. Photo: Twitter

Williams and 19-year-old Rincon were sharing the bill on the undercard to Maurice Hooker’s WBO junior lightweight defence against Alex Saucedo in Oklahoma City over the weekend.

Described by some Twitter users as “an embarrassment beyond bad”, Williams hopped around the ring before he was sent to the canvas by a thunderous left body shot from a clearly better fighter and the Louisiana-native failed to get up as the referee called the fight over.

Although Williams deserves plaudits for getting into the ring in the first place, the fight caused global outrage since the bout was shown on pay TV (ESPN) in the US. Williams eventually got up and was wandering around the ring, refusing to even stand by the referee for the official announcement.

Even commentators laughed off the one-sided beating describing it as a “schoolboy fight”, but many fight fans took it much further on Twitter, where they vented their anger.

“This reminds me of trying to spar with my friend after his first couple of boxing lessons,” commented Iain Kidd on Twitter. “That dude should never been allowed in an amateur fight at this point, let alone a televised professional bout. Whoever set that up needs to be blacklisted from the sport.”

World Boxing Wall also commented on Twitter that “whoever let this guy in the ring to box live on ESPN needs to have a long hard look at themselves.”

Another Twitter user, Shannon Courtenay, commented: “Did they pull someone out from the audience to box or something?”

Meanwhile J in J-town was not having any of it. “THAT WAS A DISGRACE! That guy had no business in a boxing ring. Definitely not something to brag about, Top Rank!”

Some Twitter users applauded Williams for getting into the ring despite his seemingly complete lack of skills.

“Hey that all said it takes guts to get into the ring, So yes maybe short on skills but has guts a lot of us don’t have,” said a Twitter user.

Post