Pongsaklek Wonjongkam v Sonny Boy Jaro

Boxing is a sport that I follow very closely and like most other sports you can generally see mismatches a mile away. A lot of fights in boxing sadly fall into the mismatch category where 1 fighter is supposed to win and the other is supposed to merely get in the ring, lose and cash his cheque. Sometimes however things don't go to plan as we found out earlier this year.

Thai Pongsaklek Wonjongkam is a true legend of the boxing world. Since making his professional debut back in 1994 he has crafted one of the most outstanding records in recent memory accumulating an amazing 86 victories. Despite starting his career in total obscurity and losing 2 of his first 11 bouts he has grafted out a genuine hall of fame career.

Whilst many fans of the sport want to point out that Wonjongkam has beaten a lot of novices he has also beaten a lot of top tier fighters such as Malcolm Tunacao, Luis Alberto Lazarte, Daisuke Naito, Gilberto Keb Baas, Tomonobu Shimizu, Julio Cesar Miranda, Koki Kameda, Suriyan Sor Rungvisai and Edgar Sosa, a relative who's who of lower weight boxers. Wonjongkam's dominance in the ring saw him go unbeaten from 1996 to 2007 losing only to a man he had already beaten twice.

As well as the names he had beaten he had become one of the sports premier champions, a 2-time WBC Flyweight champion who had held the title for almost a decade in his 2 reigns.

In the opposite corner we had Filipino Sonny Boy Jaro, a fighter who was effectively a journeyman. Despite having recorded 33 wins himself he had also lost 10 bouts including 7 by stoppage, he had never won a fight outside of his homeland. Whilst he had fought for a world titles in the past he had been widely out pointed by Edgar Sosa and stopped by Giovani Segura in just 65 seconds. He was supposed to lose again to the Wonjongkam.

On paper their records going into this bout could not be much more different. Wonjongkam's was an excellent 83-3-2 (43) whilst Jaro was a much less impressive 33-10-5 (23), however records don't tell the whole tale of the story.

Straight from the opening bell Jaro set out to prove a point and used his bullish strength to force the fight against Wonjongkam. Within a round Wonjongkam had been dropped and the Thai fans in attendance were in shock, their fighter was being bullied by the much smaller challenger. Wonjongkam fought back in round 2 but was dropped again in round 3.

Jaro was on a roll and whilst Wongjonkam survived rounds 4 and 5 with out being dropped he was certainly not looking like the fighter that had been such a fantastic champion. In round 6 Jaro started to really turn the screw and although he was deducted for a low blow he would again drop and hurt Wonjongkam who was now starting to look more and more like a spent force. It didn't even take the full round for Jaro to finish the job and finish off Wonjongkam as he knocked out the Thai late in the 6th.

Whilst no major sports book in the UK had the bout and the actual odds offered anywhere are hard to find, I would be shocked if Wonjongkam was any larger than a 1/25 favourite. This was a major upset in the boxing world.

Since this bout Wonjongkam has bounced back with 2 more victories at a much, much lower level whilst Jaro lost his title by decision after a war with Japanese fighter Toshiyuki Igarashi.

Photo Courtesy of Scott Mallon

Rafael Nadal v Lukas Rosol

Upsets in Tennis do happen on a semi regular basis, especially amongst the lower level players but amongst the elite they are incredibly rare. The top Tennis players today are just that much ahead of the rest that upset's, especially at Grandslams, come around once in a blue moon. When they happen however they are notable and deserve to be treat like massive news, at least in the sporting world.

As we all know Tennis has 4 Grandslams a year. The first of is the Australia Open held on a Plexicushion (hard) surface, the second is held on Clay in France at Roland Garros, the third is held at Wimbledon on Grass and the final is the US Open held on DecoTurf (hard).

As we went into Wimbledon 2012 we had already seen both Novak Djokovic (Australian Open) and Rafael Nadal (Roland Garros) claim a slam each as the two men battled for the #1 ranking in the world. Those two were were seen as the top contenders for Wimbledon, with former 6 time champion Rodger Federer also seen as being in contention alongside Britain's own Andy Murray.

What no one expected was that one of the supposed "big 4" would fail to at least make it to the quarter finals. At the quarter final stage the likes of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer and Janko Tipsarevic were expected to at least put up a fight with the big 4 with maybe one of them scoring a victory. Amazingly however Rafael Nadal didn't even get beyond the second round as he was stunned in the biggest upset of the Tennis year by the unknown Lukas Rosol.

The 26 year old Rosol was ranked around #100 and seen as early round fodder for Nadal. Prior to 2012 Rosol had never even made it past the 1st qualifying stage at Wimbledon, and had in fact only made it to the main draw in 4 of his previous 18 attempts at Grandslams. Despite having been on the circuit for a few years Rosol had never been ranked in the top 60 and actually had a notable losing career record.

Rosol made an unexpectedly solid start against Nadal taking the Spaniard to a tie-breaker in the opening round before finally losing  the tie breaker 11-9. This should really have set alarm bells ringing around the Tennis world that Rosol wasn't just coming into the match to make up the numbers. It wasn't that Nadal was playing bad but Rosol was playing excellently and was really holding his own.

You could see that Rosol's confidence was growing as the match went on and in set 2 the Czech exceeded all expectation and not equaled Nadal but actually won the set 6-4. The Czech then surprisingly claimed the 3rd set to take a 2-1 lead. He was pushing Nadal to the limit but still it was expected that Nadal would fight back and that's just what the long haired Spaniard did as he claimed the 4th set 6-2.

Going into the final set some on forums were saying that Rosol had bottled it and Nadal had finally started to show his class. Instead the loss of the 4th set seemed to set Rosol back to his best as he remarkably held his nerve to clinch the 5th and final set 6-4, winning the match 6-7, 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.

Before the match Nadal was 1/100, a nailed on certainty, he had moved to 1/250 at one point (if not even shorter odds) it was all but certain that Nadal would win but Rosol's serve (which scored an amazing 22 aces!) refused to yield and we had what many will remember as the greatest Tennis upset in recent memory. 

Sadly for Rosol he was beaten in straight sets in his next match by German Philipp Kohlschreiber (the 27 seed) and then failed to make the US Open losing to Argentinian Guido Pella in the 3rd round of Qualifying.

Picture thanks to Su--May