Corrie Sanders, who has been shot dead aged 46, won the WBO heavyweight boxing championship in remarkable fashion on March 8 2003.
The South African Sanders was already a grizzled 37-year-old veteran with 39 pro fights behind him when he met the giant Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko in front of a capacity crowd in Hanover, Germany, going into the fight a 40-1 underdog having agreed to contest the bout at short notice.
The overwhelmingly pro-Klitschko spectators at the Preussag Arena considered the result a foregone conclusion, and were astounded when Sanders (at 6ft 4in, three inches shorter than his opponent) floored Klitschko four times to take the Ukrainian’s title in only the second round. Ring magazine declared it the “upset of the year”.
Sanders’s victory was all the more notable in that Klitschko — the younger of two formidable boxing brothers — was seen as the likely heir to Britain’s Lennox Lewis, whose career was nearing its end.
For the next year Sanders was considered a major player on the heavyweight scene – then, in April 2004, Wladimir’s elder brother Vitali stopped him in Los Angeles to capture the vacant WBC crown, Sanders having previously relinquished his WBO belt to concentrate on a challenge for the WBC title.
Although Boxing News claimed that, over the preceding 12 months, Sanders had “spent more time swinging his golf clubs than his arms at a punchbag”, the fight with Vitaly was a rip-roaring encounter. Once again the underdog, Sanders shook his opponent with the occasional counterpunch and showed considerable resilience and courage; but he took some heavy blows, and although he never went down, the referee stopped the fight in the eighth round. He finished the contest with a broken nose, swollen ears and a deep laceration over his eye. He subsequently underwent brain scans.
Sanders duly announced his retirement, claiming that not even the offer of $1 million would tempt him back into the ring.
An upright southpaw who specialised in early knockouts, Sanders’s somewhat lumbering, unathletic approach belied fast hands and a good tactical brain. Many of his best wins – including that over Klitschko – resulted from a deceptively slow start followed by a major offensive consisting of a lethally accurate punches thrown in clusters – hence his nickname “The Sniper”. He tended to box with a low guard, however, and each of his four losses came prematurely.
Born on January 7 1966, Cornelius Johannes Sanders was introduced to boxing by his father aged seven and burst into tears when he was punched in the face. He persevered, however, and went on to become a seven-times national champion, winning 180 amateur contests and losing only 11.
He launched his professional career with a first-round knockout of King Kong Dyubele and quickly ran up 23 straight wins before losing in two rounds to the American Nate Tubbs in May 1994.
He gradually rose in class, winning the lightly-regarded World Boxing Union crown along the way, before announcing his belated arrival on the world stage in a game defeat against the American Hasim Rahman in May 2000. Two stoppage victories – one against Britain’s Michael Sprott – set him up for his unexpected world title shot against Klitschko.
Sanders did not remain in retirement for long, returning to the ring in December 2004 to stop Russia’s Alexey Varakin in two rounds. Wins over Australia’s Colin Wilson and Brazil’s Daniel Bispo followed, before a first-round defeat against his fellow South African Osborne Machimana on February 2 2008 persuaded Sanders to hang up his gloves for good.
Sanders was enjoying a family celebration at a restaurant in northern Johannesburg when he was shot dead during an armed robbery.
Corrie Sanders, born January 7 1966, died September 23 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment