Heavyweight contender Efe ‘The Silent Roller’ Ajagba 19-1 (14) proved that the amateurs and the pros are different games with a dominant fourth-round knockout of ‘Big Bad’ Joe Goodall 10-2-1 (9) at the Tahoe Blue Event Center in Lake Tahoe, Nevada on Saturday night.
The 29-year-old Nigerian was beaten by Australian Goodall, 31, at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland but got his revenge of the weekend to keep his hopes of a world title shot alive.
Working behind a stiff jab, Ajagba was largely able to keep Goodall at the end of his punches. The left stick was effective in disguising his right cross and right uppercut, with the later visibly hurting Goodall in the third.
Early in the fourth a right hand from Ajagba hurt Goodall, whose legs turned stiff. With plenty of time left on the clock Ajagba started teeing off, bouncing bombs off Goodall’s chin. The underdog refused to go down but his legs betrayed his condition with referee Tony Weeks stepping in to halt the contest at the 0:50 mark.
“It’s been long. I was out of boxing for a long time. When I came back with Stephen Shaw [in January 2023], my confidence was not there,” Ajagba said.
“I had just come back from surgery, and I had to get back into shape. But right now, I came back with full confidence. That’s why I took him out.
“[My team] pushed me in training camp. They made me work extremely hard in this camp to make sure I win the fight. I sparred a lot of different guys to make me stay strong.
“Whoever they offer me to fight, I’m ready to go. I will go back with my team to talk about that.”
Speaking at the final press conference before the fight on Thursday, Ajagba explained why the fight was so important to him.
“We sparred each other a long time ago,” Ajagba said. “And I lost to him in the Commonwealth Games in 2014. So, that’s the guy I lost to. This fight will be a rematch for me.
“This fight means a lot to me because of that loss… I’m going to come as a beast in the ring. I’m going to come with everything, the training, the sparring, everything I did. I’ve been knocking people out in sparring. I’m going to put all of that in the fight.”
Goodall entered the fight on a high following his sixth-round knockout of Stephan Shaw in July, but refused to read too much into his previous sparring sessions with Ajagba.
“I never really talk about sparring. Sparring is sparring, fighting is fighting for me,” Goodall said.
“We know each other well, we’ve been around the traps of the top level in the boxing world.
“There’s a few things that he might see that’ll work for him in this fight and there’s a few things I see working for me in this fight.
“It’s just up to me to execute.”
For Goodall it’s back to the drawing board, while Ajagba will be looking for a high profile scalp in his next bout.
