Matías Stuber
Malaga boxer Samuel Molina knocked out Mohammed Sahnoun, known as ‘Goat Mido’, in the tenth round of a local derby in his home city on Saturday night. The win handed the first professional defeat to the Torremolinos-based fighter, although a brawl among spectators overshadowed the bout for a time.
Promoters billed the fight as a meeting of the present and future of Spanish boxing. With a 36-4-1 record, Molina was the established name, while Mido had won all ten of his professional fights.
As a derby between a Malaga boxer and a rival from just down the coast, it drew a sell-out crowd of 10,000 to the city's Municipal Auditorium, underscoring the province's appetite for the sport.
Molina, the more experienced of the two, pressed from the centre of the ring in search of heavy shots. Mido, meanwhile, used his jab and the full width of the ring to stay out of range.
Molina picked up a cut to his right cheekbone in the third round that bled for the rest of the night, and by the fourth his nose was bleeding too. Nevertheless, he kept landing hard punches and finished the seventh strongly, with only the bell saving Mido from a first knockdown.
Disruptive break
The fight was then halted for around 15 minutes when trouble broke out among fans at the ringside tables. Chairs were thrown, and some of the crowd fled to the corridors to avoid getting caught up in it.
National Police officers in riot gear eventually intervened, and the contest resumed once they removed those responsible.
Until then, the fight had been living up to its billing. However, the long break gave both men time to recover and drained much of the atmosphere from the venue.
Even so, Molina forced Mido onto the ropes for the first time in the ninth. In the tenth, he put him down three times before the Swiss referee completed the count, though the official let the punishment go on too long and should have stepped in sooner, particularly as Mido’s corner had already been asking for the fight to be stopped.
The build-up had been heated, with neither boxer hiding his dislike of the other. After the knockout, Molina mimed burying his opponent with an imaginary shovel, yet the pair embraced once it was all over, leaving the crowd with a picture of Spanish boxing’s present and future side by side in the ring.