The “fight” was part of WBF doubleheader in Soumagne (near Liege), Belgium on Saturday (Sept. 29), staged by Euroboxe in cooperation with Fight Production and even though the second WBF championship on the show ended also in the first round, it featured real action as Belgium’s dangerous Geoffrey Batello, 12-0 (11 KO’s), punched defending International cruiserweight champion Jean-Claude Bikoi to the canvas twice to force a stoppage.

For Hersisia, it was only the second outing with trainer Ralf Rocchigiani and everybody had hoped for a more competitive foe than Celestino, now 37-21 (25 KO’s), turned out to be, although the emphazise was more “to get into it” in Rocky’s Gym in Duisburg. “The training went fantastic and that was important,” said the Dutchman’s manager Olaf Schroeder, but admitted “I have to take blame for such a weak opponent, who was a late-substitute, but nevertheless…”.

In fact, the playing of the anthem’s lasted longer than the meak action. Hersisia began stalking his foe, showing no ill-effects whatsoever from his disputed loss in June against Taras Bidenko (L 12). Soon, the 33-year-old from Den Haag cornered the eight-year-older Brazilian and then held back when Celestino looked at his foot. “At first, I thought he was maybe looking for coins on the floor,” smiled Hersisia later, but he immediately clobbered his foe to the canvas when the referee let them resume action. Celestino stayed down and had to be led back to his corner, where it was confirmed he hurt his ankle. “I’m disappointed, but what can you do?”, asked Schroeder, “Don King would scream about a history-making ‘ankle punch’ (referring to the weird ending of Valuev vs McCline), but we keep it realistic. Richel had nothing to beat in front of him.”

Disappointment or not, it was still a remarkable night for 44-year-old former WBO ‘world’ cruiserweight champion Ralf Rocchigiani, who had prepared Hersisia for seven weeks together with his brother and double-‘world’ champion Graciano at their Duisburg gym. Aside from having previously trained Graciano at one point, Hersisia clinching the WBF Intercontinental title was Ralf Rocchigiani’s first title success in his budding career as a trainer. Rumours about other high-profile German fighters taking a keen interest in Rocchigiani’s work are already circulating. In 1995, Ralf became the first German fighter after Max Schmeling to win a ‘world’ title abroad when he stopped Carl Thompson in Manchester.

Hersisia’s Heavyweight Belt Collection:

2002  2002: WBA Fedecentro Champion (KO 2 Eduardo Sandivares)

2003  2003: Dutch Champion (KO 2 Patriche Costel)

2003: WBF World Champion (KO 9 Sandro Abel Vazquez)

2003: Netherlands Kingdom Champion (KO 1 Zoltan Petranyi)

2004  2004: Benelux Champion (KO 8 Sergey Dychkov)

2007: WBF Intercontinental Champion (KO 1 Marcos Celestino)