An absolute war of a heavyweight clash has seen Kiki Toa Leutele pull off a massive comeback to hand Toese Vousiutu the first loss of his career.
Continuing an epic undercard of the Nikita Tszyu Vs Jack Brubaker card at the Hordern Pavilion, the heavyweights delivered a slugfest for the ages.
But there have been questions asked after a bizarre scorecard was called out with two judges scoring the contest 76-75 for Leutele, while the other judge had it 73-78 in Vousiutu’s favour.
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Vousiutu flew out of the blocks, landing some big punches in the early exchanges, including knocking Leutele down early in the second round.
Vousitutu had come into the fight with a 5-0 record, with all his wins coming by knockout inside the first two rounds.
But Leutele was a different level as he bounced back from the early knockdown and took Vousiutu the full eight rounds.
Vousiutu appeared to have suffered a right hand injury
Leutele, who moves to 11-2-2 in his professional career, has only lost to world-ranked heavyweights Demsey McKean and Justis Huni.
“That was just a remarkable heavyweight fight,” Ben Damon said on Main Event.
Olympic bronze medallist Harry Garside quipped: “I’m very happy I’m not a judge right now to be honest.”
The stats were as close as they could get with Leutele landing 202 of his 446 punches, 85 to the head and 117 to the body, while Vousiutu landed 195 of his 544 shots, 129 to the head and 66 to the body.
Social media went nuts for what had unfolded.
But as the scores were handed out, The Courier Mail’s Peter Badel trashed the 78-73 scorecard.
“The scorecard that went to Vousiutu 78-73, that’s a joke seriously,” he said. “He fought well Vousiutu but he didn’t win that many rounds despite the knockdown.
“But I’ve got to give it Toese, he really impressed me with his conditioning tonight. To go eight rounds with Kiki Leutele, that showed a bit of heart. With a bit more footwork, he could be a quality fighter. I’d like to see him fight Demsey McKean or Justis Huni, he’s a good Australian fighter.”
Boxing champion Tim Tszyu said: “I thought the fight was quite even. I thought Leutele definitely after round two picked it up.
“But he did win most of the rounds in my opinion.”
But Badel was blown away by what happened in the ring.
“They need DNA testing for these two blokes — they are not human!” he said.
“Did we just see that?
“I mean Toese would deadset scare Freddy Krueger and he is, Kiki Leutele, the toughest, strongest man in the southern hemisphere. How did he survived that second round knockdown to then come back because the scores were against him. That is the greatest win of his career.”
Tszyu added: “That was a very impressive performance. To be down in the second round 10-8, you’re a long way ahead with the judges so you need to catch up. That means he won every round after that and he was landing the cleaner punches.”
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