It’s no big secret that in sports, as in life in general, there are certainly never any guarantees.
For local boxer Brandon Busby, an off night has cost him a shot at a title.
For now.
In action at Cascades Casino Hotel and Convention Center in Langley May 11 as part of a 14-fight amateur boxing card put on by Compsport, Busby was part of an elimination bought with the winner earning a shot at the BC Super Middleweight title.
“It was a good card, great fights … just not so great for our guy,” longtime Oceanside trainer and manager Richard LeStage surmised.
Busby’s bought went the full four rounds, and he lost on points.
LeStage, who came just short of guaranteeing a Busby win in the pre-fight story, said his boxer, the lone amateur in his stable, was poised, focussed and ready to go in the dressing room before the fight.
“He lost the decision … he lost the first three rounds, the fourth was debatable,” he said.
He noted the turning point might have come in the first 10 seconds of the fight when Brandon got caught “with a really big right hand, and it kind of threw his game off. You know what, he had an off night,” said LeStage.
“In boxing if you have an off night you’re going to get punched in the face. Honestly, I was surprised, but again really think it was getting caught by that big right hand … he was just never really able to get going after that.”
“It’s a learning experience,” said the longtime cornerman and one-time boxer. “There’s two things that happened in that fight: One, Brandon had an off night, and two, I wasn’t able to get him going. When a fighter loses everybody thinks he loses alone and people forget that’s (not the case) — my job is to get these guys going when they’re not going, and I wasn’t able to do that until the fourth round.”
Busby, 21, joined LeStage’s camp a few short months ago. The pair only had four rounds together in the ring going into the fight, and one of those rounds was only 15 seconds.
Brandon, 6’, 168 pounds, went into the fight as the top-ranked super-middleweight amateur in B.C. His opponent, Kalic Taylor from Surrey’s Ocean City Boxing, was undefeated at 6-0 and the current middleweight champion and moving up a class.
“You can’t always tell how badly a fighter’s hurt,” said LeStage, explaining how when Busby came back to the corner after the first round “the first thing I asked him is “how you feelin’,” and he said ‘It hurt, but he can’t hurt me,’ … a punch that big that early in the fight; I just think it threw his game off.”
Between the third and final round LeStage said he told Busby “the only way you beat this guy now is by knocking him out, and that kid did everything he had in him to knock his opponent out. Busby went at him as hard as he could; caught him in the last 20 seconds of the round and hurt him, but the other kid was smart enough to run away … too little too late.
“I think what Brandon had planned on going in and doing, he was now playing catch-up. But you know what, a loss will now get him other people that will fight him.”
NEXT UP
Brandon has been invited back to Langley June 22 for a match bought on the same card of the tittle fight, which is the main event while his pro stablemate ‘Shotgun’ Shane Andreesen is booked to bang on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights June 29 on the American side of Niagara Falls.
LOCAL TRAINER Richard LeStage and his fighters have put Oceanside on the boxing map. James Clarke file photo
