The “That was Then, This is now Trust” put on an entertaining promotion at their headquarters in Ellerslie (Auckland suburb) on Saturday, December 2. A big crowd turned up to a banquet of fresh sea food and wild game and to enjoy a night of boxing. In the main event a heavyweight contests scheduled for four rounds, Lava Savelio was forced to retire at the start of the third round against last minute substitute Richard Tutaki, with a broken bone in his left hand. The action had been non-stop up until then with Tutaki having slightly the better of them proceedings.
Results of the semi-pro prelims (all over 3 x 2min rounds) – former middleweight champion Craig Parsons (91.8kg) win points Shane Old (90.1kg); Jo Norman (85kg) win points Mata Masters (84.1kg); Jesse Keane (69.5kg) win TKO round 2 Daniel Baker (66.4kg); Conrad King win TKO round 3Duncan King, heavyweights; in the best fight of the night, Anthony Nansen win points Jeff Speedy, heavyweights.
In the last NZ promotion of the year Richard Tutaki was again a late replacement. American Chauncy Welliver was slated to fight current NZ heavyweight champion, Daniel Tai for the vacant WBO Asia-Pacific title at the ABA Stadium on Saturday, December 9 when Tai pulled out on the day of the fight. Tutaki came to the rescue once again but the fight was downgraded from 12 rounds to 10 so the WBO official who had flown in from Hawaii, found he had little role to play which of course still added to the promoters cost.
Tutaki found outworked round after round by the clever, bulky but light-punching Welliver who won in a unanimous decision. In the only incident in a somewhat repetitive fight, Chauncy landed a visibly low blow in the third round and referee Lance Revill applied then no-foul rule to give Richard a much needed respite. Revill asked both fighters to pick the pace up at the start of the fifth round.
The promoters Zone Promotions, on Welliver’s insistence billed him as “The Fat Dorky White Guy” when in fact he is half Sioux Indian.
In the only other professional fight on the card Ben Matautia (106.6kg) dropped Paul Schwalger (105.1kg) in the first round with a good old one-two. Schwalger came back swinging in an all action stanza. A volley of shots from Ben in the second round left Paul reeling helplessly into the ropes with Revill moving swiftly to stop it.
Matautia is a lay preacher in his local church and is sometimes billed as “The Minister” which could cause some confusion to record compilers.
