• Dogboe – Can the nation still wait for another world title from him?

 Ghanaians a fortnight ago woke up Sunday morning to the upset­ting news that the nation’s world title boxing hopeful – Isaac ‘Royal Storm’ Dogboe, had lost in his intrepid bid to become champion again.

Dogboe staggered and slumped to two-time Cu­ban Olympic gold medallist Robeisy “El Tren” Ramirez 117-110, 118-109 and 119-108 for the vacant WBO feath­erweight title at Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa in the United States.

After losing his super-ban­tamweight title few years ago – specifically on Decem­ber 8, 2018, in back-to-back defeats to Emanuel Navarre­te, the Ghanaian vigorously bounced back to blow out the likes of Chris Avalos, Adam Lopez, Christopher Diaz and Joet Gonzalez in his last four fights. Remarkable feats!

A new Dogboe was born, supposedly. It was not diffi­cult at all for a generous pre­diction to be posted in favour of the Ghanaian aggressive boxer – with many pencil­ling him down for greatness again.

At least, scores of the sport’s experts favoured him to punch his way to reclaim­ing his belt, especially when

 his nemesis – Emmanuel Navarrete, had moved up in weight, and was entirely out of his path to another star­dom.

It was a huge set-back, therefore, when Dogboe failed heavily in his bid to become champion again after losing unanimously to Ramirez.

Watching the fight close­ly, it seems – even though Dogboe has improved pret­tily well under top trainer Barry Hunter, he is still short of endurance, power and ring-craftiness.

In most of his bouts, you see a boxer that begins ferociously and runs out of steam as the fight progresses. His stamina level has been suspect; his guard impres­sively powder-puffed and his ring-craftiness a bit dawdling. He throws an avalanche of punches with many going astray – and it is a worry that never gets settled.

That notwithstand­ing, though he lost against Ramirez, the wide difference on the scorecards of the judges, looks a bit question­able. He did enough to get a close call. But that should tell Dogboe that he needs to take his ‘judges’ into the ring through a more convincing performance than what he demonstrated two weeks ago. He must not leave anything to chance.

Indeed, it is high time Dogboe sat and took a good look at his fight-style and perhaps re-strategize if he still wants to be relevant in the sport – especially at the fiercely thrilling feather­weight division.

He must work his tail off and live by his special motto: “NeHo!”

NeHo, in the Ewe lan­guage, means to uproot, to lift oneself through adversity.

“NeHo is something I use because, regardless of the situation in the ring – or any situation – you have to keep coming forward; you nev­er give up. You uproot and accomplish your mission,” Dogboe told The Ring maga­zine recently.

“Neho, to me, helps psy­che myself up. You’re going to go through difficulties in the ring but how do you do that?

“You have to psyche yourself up to where you think nothing can get in your way. People may misinterpret the word, that to uproot and destroy everything there. But if the military is going on the battlefield, your soldiers are scared; believe me. But the leader will give them some­thing to recite and that’s the word that I use to keep com­ing forward and digging deep – and I keep saying that my head, ‘NeHo, NeHo, NeHo.’”

So, it is time Dogboe take a firm decision either to do the ‘Neho’ now or think about hanging the gloves. And, that decision must be fast because at 28 years, age is steadily but speedily catching up with him in the featherweight category.

By John Vigah