While it had been a very wet day, the Boxing-Gods made sure the rain had stopped when the first bell sounded for a big World Boxing Federation (WBF) Championship double-header staged outdoors on a football-pitch in Essen, Germany on Saturday evening, August 5.

The sold-out event promoted by Bjoern Sothmann had WBF Women’s Intercontinental Strawweight Champion Oezlem Sahin making her first title-defense against French Flyweight Champion Sandy Coget, in what was an intense and entertaining fight.

It was very competitive, but Sahin was mostly on the front-foot and knocked her challenger down in the third round with a right hand. Coget beat the count of referee Thomas Hackenberg, and proved gritty and classy by fighting her chance to the very end.

Judges Roman Morawiec, Brahim Ait Aadi and Piotr Wolke all scored the fight for Sahin with 96-93, 95-94 and 98-91 tallies respectively. The Champion improved her record to 22-1-1 (7), while Coget, a two-time European title-challenger, drops to 8-7-1 (0).

In the second WBF championship fight, undefeated prospect Shokran Parwani captured the vacant International Cruiserweight title when he impressively stopped Frank Bluemle. It was a tough test for Parwani who met plenty of resistance from Bluemle, but a hard body-shot ended matters in the fifth round.

Born in Afghanistan but based in Hamburg, 25-year-old Southpaw Parwani showed good potential as he took his record to 8-0 (7). Weighing in only a few kilos over the Cruiserweight limit, he will reportedly look to move down to Light Heavyweight. Bluemle (32), from Neumuenster, falls to 14-3-2 (9).