Joe Cordina has revealed the extent to which he remains “sickened” by his defeat by Anthony Cacace.
The Welshman lost for the first time as a professional when in May, on the undercard of Tyson Fury-Oleksandr Usyk, he was unexpectedly stopped in eight rounds.
He therefore sacrificed his IBF super-featherweight title – his struggles to make the 130lbs weight limit mean that he plans to return at lightweight before the conclusion of 2024 – and remains troubled by the nature of the defeat.
In the third round Cordina, 32, was punched on the break by his challenger. He was knocked down before the round’s conclusion – the referee Bob Williams didn’t punish Cacace – and struggled until being stopped in the eighth. He has also since seen Cacace agree to make the first defence of his title – against Josh Warrington at Wembley Stadium on September 21.
Cordina remains one of Britain’s most marketable fighters and is also moving into a weight division that is among the world’s most competitive, but reflecting on what unfolded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and on the way Cacace and Warrington will contest his former title, he told BoxingScene: “It hurt [to lose] – especially the way I did. If I’d lost to someone way better than me, I’d hold my hands up and say, ‘He’s better than me’. He was better than me on the night, and he got the win on the night – that’s all there is to say about it, really.
“But the way it happened wasn’t how I planned. I believe if he didn’t throw them two shots, and it didn’t affect me the way it did – I’ve never experienced that before. It was inexperience – I just wanted to get back in there and fight, where I should have used my head and took a knee or took my five minutes or made a fuss about it. It’s quite sickening, really, to think about it.
“The way it happened, it’s been on my mind, because it was out of my hands, really. If you’d seen the [first] two rounds, you’d know that they were pretty comfortable, and they went in my favour. If it would have carried on – but like the saying is, ‘If my Auntie had a dick she’d be my uncle’ – if I didn’t get caught with the two shots, the momentum would have carried on being in my favour. As fights go on, I gain in confidence; I build, and that’s the way it would have been.
Cordina is on a family holiday in Malta, and he plans to return to his trainer Tony Sims’ Essex-based gym in September and to agree with promoters Matchroom a date in November or December for his return to the ring.
“A lot of people sent me messages,” he said. “To be honest, a lot of them I didn’t open. I stayed away from my phone for quite a bit. The people that come to my fights and message me on wins and stuff like that, I was messaging them back. But certain people were messaging me after I lost, and they don’t praise me when I win – they don’t come to my fights – and it just felt like they were happy to see me lose.
“It could just be me, and it playing on my mind. I just tried to stay away from all the messages, because the way I was looking at it, maybe the whole occasion was clouding my judgement on certain people. I just tried to stay away from it.”