Osumanu Adama’s Half Pound Overweight Fizzle Raises Big Belt Questions
By Robert Brizel, Real Combat Media Correspondent
Middleweight Osumanu Adama, 32, had a chance to win three significant title belts on Saturday March 16, 2013, in Lowell, Massachusetts, and secure a World Boxing Council top 40 rating. Instead Adama fizzled, and showed up to weigh in at a bizarre 160 1/2 pounds, did not lose a half pound in weight, and thus was ineligible to win the World Boxing Council Continental Americas and International Boxing Organization Inter-Continental Middleweight vacant titles for ratings at stake.
Adama was awarded a ten round split decision win over 42 year old light middleweight Grady Brewer, losing of 15 bouts, and loser of four of his last eight bouts, the same Grady Brewer who was knocked out in less than two rounds by Kelly Pavlik 12 years ago. Adama jabbed out of distance to a great extent, but Brewer outworked Adama with frequent punch flurries which scored. Adama, Joliet, Illinois, by way of Accra, Ghana, rose to 21-3, 15 knockouts.
Brewer, Lawton, Oklahoma, fell to 30-15 with 16 knockouts, and still holds the IBO Inter-Continental Light middleweight title, where he is better off going back to fight at 154 pounds. Grady Brewer weighed in for the Adama fight at 158 1/2 pounds, his heaviest fight weight since weighing 160 pounds for his six round decision win over David Foster in Saint Louis, Missouri in April 2000 in his fourth professional bout.
Adama is still world ranked at number 11 by the international Boxing Federation.
For a fighter such as Adama to put in such a questionable performance against an aging fighter in his forties such as Grady Brewer raises some big future questions.
But the biggest question is what was going through entrepreneur businessman and Chicago Fight Promotion manager Wasfi Tolaymat’s mind to spend well over ten thousand dollars in WBC and IBO sanctioning fees, probably much more than that,
and then watch Adama not lose half a pound and watch the belt fees go up in smoke.
It would be one thing to put up money for the University of Lowell fight card, including the Osumanu Adama and Grady Brewer purses, if the WBC belt were obtained. The Adama win may reactivate his rating on BoxRec, but if the purpose of the card was to score points with the WBC, Wasfi Tolaymat lost a lot of money for no good reason, and Adama trainer Joseph Awinongya fell short of the mark.
It could be Adama and Awinongya did not want to risk trying to lose the weight before the fight, and risk going into the ring with any significant depletion of energy against a dangerous fighter like Brewer, who owns a win over top contender Fernando Guerrero. Losing a half pound is not like losing a few pounds, you do a good run around the block for 20 minutes, and then you weigh in with your clothes off. Adama’s physical condition would not have been significantly changed by a jog in the nearby park, and returning a half pound less to lose weight.
If the best Wasfi Tolaymat’s best fighter can do is fight for a title a half pound overweight, Wasfi Tolaymat is better off not doing fight cards at all, because it does not pay to put forth the costly financial effort to stage a fight card like this, and not get any return for your investment. Wasfi Tolaymat is a very successful hard working businessman outside of boxing, and would expect his fighters to follow the same hard work ethic he demonstrates outside the ring with the same effort he puts forth for them. For a world ranked ‘contender’ to fail to make weight for a WBC bout by half a pound is unprecedented, and shocking to boxing experts, even to those who hardly know of Adama.
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