Social media sensation Deji earned his way back into the win column with an outlandish finish in his ring return tonight in Qatar.
The YouTuber made his first outing since May of last year under his brother KSI’s Misfits Boxing banner in one of the most anticipated fights of their big ‘Super Card’ event in Doha. He faced 0-5 influencer DaWood Savage, who had already been viciously stopped by Salt Papi and Ben Williams.
And it looked as though the Brit was losing on the scorecards before landing a stoppage win seemingly out of nowhere after a clinch breakup ended with Savage on the ground. He had just landed a seemingly phantom knockdown with a combination that didn’t land, and fans are enraged on X and Instagram/
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Deji lands outrageous stoppage over Dawood Savage in ring return
Heading into tonight’s ‘super card’, there were a number of questions surrounding Deji’s increasingly strange boxing comeback. After three fights in 2022 including an exhibition with Floyd Mayweather, he competed once last year before announcing his comeback.
He had been due to face reality TV star Joey Essex, but that bout fell through. Instead, Deji took on the winless Dawood Savage, who is believed to be one of the worst fighters around the celebrity boxing scene.
Deji tipped the scales at almost 10lb heavier than his rival, and the fight was changed to exhibition rules at late notice. This meant four two minute rounds for the pair, adding further to the allure of the fight.
However, Savage seemed to be winning in the early exchanges, at least in the hearts and minds of fans watching. With Misfits champion Anthony Taylor in the corner, he adopted an aggressive and obnoxious close fight style, which stifled the far superior Deji.
Then seconds into the third, the Brit seemed to miss with an uppercut, right cross combination, but Savage went down. The referee refused to score it a knockdown, and the pair ended up in a clinch, after which the underdog jumped to the ground and refused to get up, meaning a TKO win for Deji.
Fans brand fight dodgy as Deji defeats Dawood Savage
Social media was immediately in uproar after the fact, with fans claiming the fight was a fix. Savage claimed in a post-fight interview to have been injured, but it did little to satiate X users, who were enraged by what they had seen.
“Deji was literally losing the fight, then his opponent gave up after receiving two punches,” one fan wrote after the fact. “Deji also came in this fight fatter than he was before training camp. Deji is honestly a clown.”
Another claimed that the entire ordeal was “The weirdest boxing match I’ve ever seen lmao.” One user then added “That looked like the weakest knockout I’ve ever seen, and also, it looked like it took him a couple of seconds to process that punch before going down.”
Even commentator Ben Davis, who was at ringside calling the show, seemed baffled by what he had seen. The former BKFC and Karate Combat fighter asked his followers: “With respect – what was that?”
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