Isaac Dogboe Was Not Well Conditioned — Trainer

The father and trainer of dethroned World Boxing Organisation (WBO) super bantamweight champion, Isaac Dogboe, has explained that his son's loss to Mexico's Emanuel Navarrete was as a result of poor preparations in the build-up to the title fight at the Madison Square Garden in New York last Saturday.

It was only Dogboe’s second title defence and his first career loss in 20 professional bouts.

A day after the Ghanaian star lost his title, Paul Dogboe took the opportunity via Facebook to apologise to Ghanaians for letting the nation down, blaming the boxer’s shocking defeat on the lack of fitness and difficulty in making the weight.

He admitted also that the team underestimated the Mexican as they had anticipated a knockout victory early in the fight, but things turned out differently as a fitter Navarrete dominated the exchanges to win on the cards of all the three judges.

His explanation corroborated a post-fight comment by the dethroned champion who said he did not prepare well for the fight and also underrated his opponent.

In a video posted on Facebook and social media platforms, Paul noted that the entire Team Dogboe met to discuss the way forward after the loss and promised to come back stronger.

He was magnanimous in defeat and explained that losing a bout was a lesson well learnt and it would help in strengthening Dogboe's resolve to return to the top as a champion in the future.

"I want to take this opportunity to apologise to the entire nation for letting them down. I think we underrated him [Navarrete] and paid the price for it.

"We learnt our lessons because we wanted to take him out in five rounds but our game plan failed. The fact is that we didn't really prepare well like we do ahead of every fight and it affected him,” he said.

Paul admitted that the UK-based boxer was not in the best of physical conditioning as some programmes he had to attend in Ghana, including the royal visit by the Prince of Wales and the Dutchess of Cornwall, as well as the Hogbetsotso Festival became distractions that disrupted his preparation for the fight.

"You could see in most of the rounds that Isaac's legs were gone and it was up to fitness but we are keen on coming back stronger."

The loss was an anticlimax to an amazing run by Dogboe this year, after winning the WBO Interim super bantamweight title in Accra on January 6 and followed it up by snatching the world title four months later with an 11th round TKO victory over Mexican Jessie Magdaleno. In August, he made his first title defence with a first-round TKO victory against Japan’s Hidenori Otake.