‘The Emperor’ Ray Narh suffers 3rd ever defeat.

By Oral Ofori

On August 2, 2013, Ghanaian boxer Sugar Ray ‘The Emperor’ Narh lost to ‘The New’ Ray Robinson at the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark Delaware in his attempt to annex the vacant US Boxing Association (USBA) Welterweight belt.

‘The New’ Ray Robinson faced his toughest opponent in the form of ‘Sugar Ray Narh’ of Ghana who came into the fight with a record of 26 wins and 2 defeats.

This loss, the third ever for the boxer was unexpected by Team Narh as they were counting on a win to firmly position ‘The Emperor’ in a good place to rise into the top 10 highly ranked boxers in the world with the IBF today. Fight night saw both boxers coming in strongly till the third round when the Ghanaian was caught by a punch that sent him to the canvas.

After ‘The Emperor’ had responded to the referee the fight resumed until the seventh round when the referee felt the ‘The New’ Ray Robinson was subjecting ‘The Emperor’ to a barrage of assaults and thus stopped the bout with a technical knockout to make Ray Robinson the new champion of the vacant belt.

After the fight, I talked to George Hanson Jr who is a renowned  professional boxing analyst. Hanson said ‘it appeared to me that the fight was fair as ‘The New’ Ray Robinson is a very awkward southpaw fighter who had gotten the better night of the fight’.

Ray Narh revived his career after a two year layoff by defeating Ronald Cruz in a nationally televised fight on NBC Sports Network in the USA on June 14, 2013 in Berthlehem Pennsylvania. This loss therefore came as a set back to his corner.

The trainer of the Ghanaian fighter; Kwame Asante on this same date in August 2, 2008 produced his second world champion for Ghana in the person of Joshua Clottey in the IBF Welterweight division.

Kwame Asante guided two Ghanaian boxers; Joseph ‘King Kong’ Agbeko and Joshua ‘The Grand Master’ Clottey to IBF world titles in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The legendary Asante tells me that his third and biggest project will be Ray ‘The Emperor’ Narh.

Despite the loss, the trainer says they are going back to the drawing board to devise a new strategy for their next win as he believes he will become a world champion a third time again. ‘Things happen but we will be strong and move on’ Asante says.