MONTREAL — After knocking his opponent down in the second round, Dzmitry Asanau received a tongue lashing in the corner. It wasn’t the greeting many would have expected, but Samuel Décarie-Drolet wanted to make sure his young prospect was putting their training and experience to practical use.
That didn’t include getting over-excited at early success and opening himself up to his opponent’s counter punches. It was a hard lesson that Asanau had learned two fights prior, when he survived a scare against Matias Rueda. While on the offensive, Asanau was caught by a left hook he didn’t see, wobbling briefly before coming back to stop his opponent a few rounds later.
“There’s a lot of angry words to my side,” Asanau recalled afterwards. “Just stay focused. That's the main advice. Don't use things that you never did in training. ‘Why you use this? Why you start to blow your punches, we didn't train this.’”
“He gave me some good advice, and woke me up, shake me a little bit. I’m just still continuing my plan, because after the knockdown, I'm focusing on how I can finish him and lost focus on the fight.”
The corner advice paid off for Asanau, as he settled down and got back to the work that first brought him success. The following round, he finished off the previously undefeated Laid Douadi for good, improving his record to 11-0 (5 KOs) with his most impressive victory to date. The 29-year-old Asanau scored both knockdowns with left hooks to the body, finishing off a French boxer who entered the fight with a 27-0-1 record.
Promoter Camille Estephan of Eye of the Tiger Management was happy with what he saw from his prospect.
“Asanau was very impressive. When we signed him on, they told me he’s a bit of a Lomachenko, that he’s a machine, a robot in the ring. The knock against him was that he wasn’t aggressive enough and he didn’t have the power and he’s shown he has both,” said Estephan.
For Asanau, a 2016 and 2020 Olympian, the progress he has shown is the product of great personal sacrifice. Born in Belarus and now living in Dubai with his wife and young son, the unbeaten lightweight has been spending up to seven weeks at a time training and sparring in Montreal under Decarie. He knows that the sacrifice will pay off as he rises up the rankings in the sport.
“For me this is a little bit difficult. I'm staying here alone. Just what I see is training, home, sleep, eat, repeat. That’s it,” said Asanau.
“It's my job. Everyone has a job like you. You can work in a factory. You can work in the office. I work in the gym.”
Asanau is already ranked no. 8 by the WBC at 135lbs, but acknowledges that he has plenty of work still to do to get to the level where he wants to be. He’s an avid follower of the politics in his division who is up to date on the latest matchups near the top, as well as which fighters are likely to fight one another. He’s not a fan of Gervonta Davis’ inactivity as WBA champion, and feels an interim champion should be named if that belt is being tied up, and foresees something similar happening if WBC champion Shakur Stevenson ends up fighting Teofimo Lopez at 140lbs.
If he had his way, Asanau says a good step-up fight for him would be a fight with Ricardo Nunez, the former title challenger from Panama with a 26-7 (22 KOs) record. Nunez is 32 years old and rated no. 2 by the WBC at lightweight, though he's coming off a disqualification loss against Jon Fernandez in June.
“I like how Tyson Fury thinks: Show me the money. It's boxing. You know, like you want to fight with Gervonta or Shakur, you want to fight with any one of the champions, but you need to grow to this level. I'm still growing. I'm still moving up in my boxing ranking. I just want to train hard to have some fights with experienced guys, maybe Ricardo Nunez, number two in WBC. Why not him?,” said Asanau.
“We have an amazing team with Eye of the Tiger. If it's correct management, correct promotion, correct time, I hope I will be a world champion.”
