20.8.2007: “I’ll be back!” - He said it right after his last outing, a best-fight-of-the-night battle with world-ranked Taras Bidenko (on June 30) and now proves he’s true to his words as exiting Dutch powerpuncher Richel Hersisia returned to Rocky’s Gym in Duisburg, Germany, to prepare with his trainers Ralf and Graciano Rocchigiani for another run at heavyweight glory.

Olaf Schroeder of Fight Production, who manage Hersisia, is aiming to have his Benelux heavyweight champion back in the ring by the end of September, because former WBO ‘world’ title challenger Willi Fischer’s - also under contract with Schroeder’s company - next fight is confirmed for September 21. Conveniently, the two stablemates will once again help each other with quality sparring.

Not many people and “experts” gave ‘The Dutch Sonny Liston’ much of a chance before his clash with Bidenko, but Hersisia doubtlessly proved he can hold his own with anyone in Europe. But not a few witnesses considered his close points defeat to Bidenko controversial and in fact the discussion about what manager Schroeder described as “Richel’s best performance ever” was going on for quite some days. Many ringsiders came down hard on Belgian judge Philippe Verbeke, who stunned everyone with his 117-111 score in favour of Bidenko. Verbeke defended himself against harsh critisism especially from the Dutchman’s management, explaining:

“I saw a very close fight, but that does not mean that the (final) score must be only one or two points difference. If a boxer loses most of the rounds by the smallest margin, you have a close fight but at the end there is a big difference in the scoring and that’s what happened in the Bidenko vs Hersisia fight. If in this kind of fight you are not very concentrated and don’t score round-by-round, at the end you will have the wrong impression that a draw or one point (difference) is a correct result.”

To which Schroeder shrugged his shoulders, saying:

“There you go, I guess that means Verbeke accuses his two fellow judges (who had Bidenko winning by just two points) of a lack of concentration. I suggest the WBA investigates those two sleeping pills who saw what all the other unconcentrated people in the hall saw… In any case, the fact that none of Richel’s harshest critics was able to admit they were wrong in their estimation of him – no matter the outcome – shows me he gave them a hard pill to swallow.”