By Ronnie Nathanielsz

WBC straw weight champion Oleydong Sithsamerchai (31-0, 12 KO’s) of Thailand has retained his title with an 11th round technical decision over former IBF minimum weight champion Muhammad Rachman (62-8-5, 31 KO’s) of Indonesia who surprisingly was involved in a title fight despite being ranked No.19.

The fight which was held at the Bang La Stadium in the southern Thai province of Phuket had to be stopped on the advice of the ring physician after Rachman bled profusely from a head-butt by the champion.

Veteran journalist Edward Thangarajah of the Bangkok Post who is also a WBC official said it was “an ugly fight” with Oleydong guilty of deliberately head-butting  the 37 year old former world champion which forced referee Malcolm Bulner, a former Olympic boxer and now a respected international referee from Australia to penalize the Thai by deducting two points.

However, Oleydong had done enough in the first eight rounds to be leading on the scorecards of all three judges at the time of the stoppage. South Korean judge Dong Ahn Park had Oleydong ahead 106-101, Switzerland ’s Franz Marti had the champion ahead 105-103 and Japan ’s Takeki Kanaya also had Oleydong leading 105-103.

Oleydong failed to use his height and reach advantage over Rachman and preferred to fight inside in the later rounds and as Thangarajah reported “got involved with ugly head-butts losing points unnecessarily.”
Referee Bulner said it was a rough fight which the champion with his heigh and reach advantage could have won comfortably while Oleydong’s manager was quoted as saying “I don’t know what came over him. Whether it was overconfidence or cockiness but the fact remains he boxed poorly and will take a long time to recover from this  performance.”
 
Prior to the fight Oleydong said he was confident of beating Rachman although he conceded he was wary of Rachman’s impressive history as a fighter who had never been knocked out.
 
Rachman lost his IBF title to Florante Condes of the Philippines by a twelve round split decision on July 7, 2007 in Jakarta . In his last fight on March 14, 2009 Rachman lost a lopsided ten round decision to the undefeated and classy Filipino boxer  Milan Melindo (18-0, 5 KO’s) who is currently ranked No. 6 by the WBC, No. 3 by the WBA,. No 4 by the IBF and No.1 by the WBO.