John Riel Casimero Stops Zolani Tete To Win WBO Bantamweight Title
John Riel Casimero scored a big stoppage win to claim the WBO bantamweight title.
Coming into the fight as the underdog, Casimero dominated and hurt Zolani Tete in the third round to become the WBO’s newest champion at 118 pounds. The fight took place on a Queensberry Promotions card in Birmingham, England.
About a minute into the third round of the bout, Casimero scored a pair of right hooks to drop Tete. Although he got back up, Tete clearly did not fully recovered, having trouble staying upright and finding his balance. Tete dropped to the canvas once more later in the round and Casimero stopped him altogether seconds later with a short flurry of punches that was capitalized by a big left hook.
Casimero, who previously held a light flyweight and flyweight world title, has been on a tremendous run since he decided to move away from fighting at super flyweight ever since a 12-round decision loss to Jonas Sultan in 2017. Since the loss to Sultan, Casimero has won his last five bouts, all at above 115 pounds, with every single fight ending inside the distance. Prior to the win over Tete, Casimero picked up knockout wins over Cesar Ramirez and Ricardo Espinoza.
Tete’s 2019 has been anything but a good inside the ring. Tete was supposed to fight Nonito Donaire in a WBA-WBO title unification in the World Boxing Super Series semifinals. But Tete suffered an injury days before the fight and had to withdraw from the tournament. Tete has not won a fight since October 2018 when he traveled to Russia and defend the WBO title against Mikhail Aloyan.
Here are the results for the November 30 Queensberry Promotions card from Birmingham, England:
- John Riel Casimero defeated Zolani Tete by TKO, round 3 to win the WBO bantamweight title
- Lerrone Richards defeated Lennox Clarke by split decision (116-113, 113-115, 117-112) to win the BBBofC British and Commonwealth super middleweight titles
- Hamzah Sheeraz defeated Ryan Kelly by TKO, round 6 to win the WBO European junior middleweight title
- Anthony Cacace defeated Sam Bowen by split decision (115-113, 112-115, 115-113) to win the BBBofC British super featherweight title
- Chris Jenkins and Liam Taylor fight to a technical draw, Jenkins retains BBBofC British welterweight title
- Sam Maxwell defeated Connor Parker by TKO, round 7 to retain the WBO European junior welterweight title
- Shabaz Masoud defeated Stefan Nicolae by points
- Dennis McCann defeated Stefan Slavchev by TKO, round 2
- Nathan Heaney defeated Nelson Altamirano by TKO, round 5
- George Davey defeated Dale Arrowsmith by points
- Eithan James defeated Daryl Pearce by points
- River Wilson-Bent defeated Zygimantas Butkevicius by points
