A Boxer Went Rogue After Losing And Attacked His Own Coach in Bulgaria… Levan Shonia What Were You Thinking?
We’ve all seen fighters go rogue and start brawls. They’ve happened in both boxing and MMA. Only recently we had the whole UFC 229 situation where Khabib Nurmagamedov and Conor McGregor’s teams got involved in nasty scenes that brought the sport into disrepute. The Diaz brothers infamously did something similar at Strikeforce: Nashville, years ago too.
Boxing often pretends that it’s classier than its younger combat sports compatriot, but who can forget Mike Tyson literally biting the ear off Evander Holyfield back in 1997, resulting in a third-round disqualification. When two men are so pumped full of adrenaline and testosterone, sometimes these unsavoury scenes happen. It’s because they don’t often occur that they actually make big news.
Well, you can add a new and weird addition to a long list of unsavoury post-fight incidents. Georgian fighter Levan Shonia made an absolute idiot of himself by attacking his own coach after losing by unanimous decision. Yep. His own coach.
Ludicrous
Levan Shonia was fighting the (still) unbeaten Spas Genov. The fight went the distance, but the middleweight fighter knew his fate before the results from the scorecards were read out. So he decided to take matters into his own hands by reacting in a truly unique way.
First of all, he refused to move to the centre of the ring for the official decision. Then he decided that his next move would be to challenge Genov to another round. Shonia’s coach tried to intervene and remove his livid fighter from the ring. Shonia wasn’t having it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtnUQa1Z_FY
Attack
Don’t expect these two men to go back to work together anytime soon. The pair were in the corner when Shonia threw a punch at his own coach, hitting him on the shoulder. The coach was forced to hold on to the ropes to stay upright and the pair bizarrely ended up exchanging blows.
Maybe Shonia’s inability to knock down this much older man shows just why he lost to Genov. It was more embarrassing than anything else for the fighter from the Caucasus. Now it’s gone all across the internet. That’s what happens, mate.
High-Profile
To make matters worse for him, this was on a pretty high-profile card. Hughie Fury – the cousin of Deontay Wilder’s next challenger and former heavyweight champion Tyson – was fighting Kubrat Pulev. He lost, with the devastating consequence being that he’ll probably never get to fight fellow UK heavyweight and reigning champion Anthony Joshua.
To make matters even worse for him, his defeat was even overshadowed by the ridiculous antics of Levan Shonia. Maybe he should thank the Georgian actually because fewer people will actually have noticed. It remains to be seen what sanctions Shonia will be hit with for his unsavoury behaviour. Boxing tends to be very harsh with its penalties so he could be facing a massive fine or a lengthy ban. And he didn’t even knock him out… Crazy.
