Filipino Road Warrior John Riel Casimero Shocks Zolani Tete

Filipino road warrior John Riel Casimero moved to 29-4 in Birmingham, England this Saturday night with an unexpected early knockout of long-standing bantamweight titlist Zolani Tete (now 28-4).  Casimero, who has thrown punches in five different countries in his five most recent fights, is never less than a live underdog against any bantamweight, but this latest victory must register as something of an upset – and one with potential reverberations at a pound-for-pound level.

Tete, who plies his trade in the UK under the promotional banner of Frank Warren, has become something of an honorary Brit in recent years boxing six of his last seven contests in Britain, preferring the benefits of the British pound over the comforts of his home country of South Africa.  The arrangement has worked well for the 5’9” puncher (twenty-one of twenty-eight victories coming by way of knockout) but he looked disorganized in out-pointing Mikhail Aloyan, a former crack amateur, over twelve rounds last October.  Famed for an all-action style, Tete appeared sluggish and was even docked a point for holding.

The signs, then, were there, and when he pulled out of a big-money fight with Nonito Donaire with a shoulder injury in April, his problems were compounded. Casimero, meanwhile, dusted no fewer than three opponents while Tete languished.

A fascinating fight unfolded at the bell, Casimero immediately ceding the center of the ring and moving in a stop-start circle, allowing Tete to deploy his southpaw jab to no real affect. The timing of Casimero’s first rushed attack was telling. Tete has a habit of stepping out square with his front foot and sending his weight across with that jab and the moment he did so, Casimero was on him. The strategy was an excellent one. It challenged Tete to risk more or work more in order to make his jab tell and it obscured Tete’s brilliant uppercut. The South African deploys it by shifting back slightly and bringing his man onto the punch but Casimero was banking on his superior speed to make it difficult. His ploy to attack suddenly across Tete’s distributed weight and move in a lateral half-step was removed in intensity from Manny Pacquiao’s chief ring strategy but it also bespoke some technical alterations that held sway. Pacquiao’s relationship with Casimero is one of fighter-promoter but the lineage of his style was there to see.

Casimero nicked the opener and dropped the second keeping his distance and deploying his right to the body, snaking at distance, hands low, awaiting his opportunity to strike. This called for discipline in control of distance and it was in this he sometimes failed in the second, moving across rather than around his deadly foe, an invitation to disaster. Tete also enforced a slow pace whereas Casimero, mobile and occasionally rushing, clearly wanted things to move faster.

It was poised, then, at the beginning of the third with no real herald of what was to come.  Immediately Casimero closed the distance, dipping and leaning away to give himself a split second more on evading the right hand, also throwing his first double-jab. Tete responded to the closer proximity with higher activity but he seemed reluctant to chase; Casimero narrowed his range of movement covering off perhaps a hundred degrees where he had been using three-sixty. Tete, suddenly, was favoring his back-leg for weight distribution rather than his lead leg. This meant that when Casimero launched his latest sortie, he had no weight-transfer available to him to give him that first shade of retreat and he found himself planted. The Filipino followed his jab with two short right hands, stepping round and behind Tete for the second of these and the South African fell immediately to a crouch and then to all fours.

He stood clear-eyed but his legs were betraying him, his physical uncertainty reminiscent of that of Anthony Joshua against Andy Ruiz; unlike that fight however, the coming fighter’s reckoning was near-immediate. The follow up was untidy but Tete’s disorganization was the greater of the two. He stumbled, clutched, fell; Casimero’s response was to pin his man against the ropes and weld punches together. None was telling but Tete was still so hurt from the double-right-hand that had unmanned him he sprawled while attempting to flee. The referee began a second count. Tete regained his feet again but the referee’s stoppage of the beltholder seconds later was born of his inability to defend himself rather than any individual punch.

Seeing Tete so scrambling and desperate so early in the fight was the real shock. He has been stopped before, but a decade ago, and seemed as improved a fighter as walked the earth. Never quite a threat to the pound-for-pound list, he seemed on the verge of getting his chance with a match against bantamweight kingpin Naoya Inoue all but made pending the result of this fight.

Now, it is Casimero who stands ready to match the Japanese. Charming and effusive, he called out “The Monster” post-fight, once he had got his name straight with management in a stage-whispered conversation that will likely get under Inoue’s skin. The smart money says that Casimero isn’t big enough to trouble the world’s number one bantamweight, giving up height and a significant reach advantage against a superior technician. Of course, these were the same objections that were raised in opposition to his defeating Tete, and he has done that, with ease.

Tete, meanwhile, was elevated to Inoue’s most significant test in the minds of many; and while Inoue’s recent barnburner with Donaire was seen by most as a matter of a great old fighter turning in that one last great performance, it has called Inoue’s pre-eminence into question. Perhaps there is an element of illusion to the Japanese phenom? If so, Casimero, who never knows when he is beaten and is unaffected when he is, may be well positioned to take advantage.

Hopefully we get to find out – and soon.

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