By Kamel Messani

On Friday night before a sold out crowd of 4,500 at the "Palais Marcel Cerdan" Arena in Levallois-Perret, France, Souleymane "The New Sensation" Mbaye achieved one of his dreams. He became a world champion in a second weight class. Souleymane, who has been French Champion, European (EU) Champion, European (EBU) Champion, WBA Intercontinental Champion, and the WBA junior welterweight champion delivered a permormance which confirms his position as a top world name in a talent rich welterweight division. The 4th round of the fight was one his best rounds ever.

Souleymane started the fight at a much higher space than usual. He confirmed his stamina that he had accumulated over the past 12 weeks in training. During the third round, he began to take over. During the fourth, a counter-punch (one of his numerous weapons) he hurt Ddecarie seriously and he tried hard to knock Decarie out, who is a top world class contender (WBO 2, WBA 2), but he was unable to put him away. During this round, Mbaye used a full variety of punches but mainly tried to to do damage with a right hand to the head.

In the 5th round, which Antonin deserved, Mbaye took a round off to recharge his batteries. During the next couple of rounds Decarie decided to try to recoup a portion of his deficit on the scorecards with partial success. Decarie was effectively moving forward and was a bit more active than Mbaye who was however delivered the cleaner and more effective combinations.

In the late rounds of the fight, Mbaye demonstrated that he was the boss by winning a well deserved unanimous decision. The scores were 116-113, 116-113 and 116-112.

The new objective of Mbaye is either to defend his interim title, potentially in Senegal, or to challenge full welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko at home in Levallois-Perret, but he doesn't have any problems going to Ukraine if necessary.

Souleymane in the road of justifying his new nickname "The New Sensation." Souleymane is 35-years-old but his body is still very fresh. None of his opponents, anywhere in the world, from Denmark to Spain, from Canada to the USA, from England to Germany, have been able to hurt Souleymane who only went down once in his career and got up in three seconds.