By Per Ake Persson

Caramelito Promotions will stage their first show on February 21 in Vasa, Finland with national and BBU heavyweight champ Juha Haapoja headlining.

 

Polish light heavyweight Dawid Kostecki is the official challenger for EU champ Antonio Brancalion.

 

Frenchman Jimmy Colas and Czech Lukas Konecny clash for the vacant EU jr middleweight title on March 31 in Prague with SES promoting.

 

P 3 Boxing in Finland will make an official protest to the EBU about the handling of EBU jr. welter champ Gianluca Branco´s defense against Juho Tolppola. Tolppola fought what many felt was the fight of his life when he got stopped due to a bad swelling on the right cheek. The swelling was growing but didn´t seem to affect his vision - still the fight was stopped with Branco declared a TKO winner.

 

German female flyweight Nadia Raoui will get a rematch against WIBA champ Eileen Olzewski on January 24 in Riesa on the undercard to Huck-Safonov. Olzewski and Raoui fought to a controversial draw on December 20 in Zurich on the undercard to Valuev vs Holyfield.

 

Swedish-based promotional outfit Pro Box Scandinavia staged a show in Uganda  on December 19 and if local press in Kampala are to believed it was a troubled show with all three - Aleksander Saltykov, Ilya Alekseev and Sergey Tasimov - opponents for the main bouts, not arriving at all. The official reason was bad plane connections but there seems to have been more to it than that. PBS was then forced to change the venue a day before the show. As it was Swedish-based jr welter Peter Semo, feather Abdu Tebazalwa and welter Hassan Saku all knocked out late subs from Kenya.

 

Swiss middleweight Yves Studer stopped defending EE-EU champ Vedran Akrap on the annual Boxing Day promotion in Bern, Switzerland. Attending the show was 45-year old Enrico Scacchia, who began his career in 1981 at very same venue and later headlined this annual event a number of times. Scacchia fought for the EBU title twice losing both times but was a big star in Switzerland. On December 26 1986, Enrico fought Tarmo Uusivirta in what became a classic fight; down twice Scacchia finished strongly to salvage a draw in a fight that effectively ended the Swiss-Italian´s colourful career although he fought on until 1991 - and fought the Swiss Federation as well in an attempt to get re-licensed. 

 

Swedish jr. welter weight Karlo Tabaghua was denied a permit to fight December 20 in Berlin by the Swedish Federation, SBF. SBF had two reasons for denying Karlo this. First, Sweden has a rule for seven days between fights and Tabaghua fought December 14 in Poland (winning on points over six). Secondly, SBF didn´t want Karlo to fight on a GBA sanctioned show. This might raise an eyebrow or two as GBA previously had sent a lot of fighters to Swedish shows.