Former trainer of Raphael Mensah, Ofori Asare, has advised Mensah ahead of this evening World Title fight against Alberto Machado.
Mensah will be challenging Machado for the latter’s WBA World super featherweight title at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas.
According to Asare, Mensah should go in there to box and not to fight.
“Everybody knows Raphael Mensah here in Ghana as a boxer,” he told Boxingghana.com. “Even if he will knock you out, he will knock you out with his boxing skills he doesn’t knock people out by putting pressure on them. He boxed people and then knocked them out.”
“If he can maintain that standard that is how i know him, box and take you off. but if he fights that one it will be a new style, and that is why i’m praying that he should be himself because this is not his first fight in the ring, he has been in the ring several times captain of the Ghana national junior team, he has been in the World and Africa championship.”
“He [Raphael Mensah] knows different kind of fighting styles and being a southpaw and fighting a southpaw it is like fighting yourself. He had a lot of sparring partner when he was in Ghana who are southpaws so fighting a southpaw is not something new to him but he should be able to maintain his style and then work hard to win.”
The upcoming fight will be on the undercard of Jamie Munguia and Liam Smitth. Munguia will be making his first defense of his WBO World super welterweight against the Smith.
The fight will be live on HBO Sports.
If Mensah wins, he will becomes Ghana’s ninth world champion after D.K. Poison, Azumah Nelson, Nana Yaw Konadu, Ike Quartey, Alfred Kotey, Joseph Agbeko, Joshua Clottey and Isaac Dogboe.
Mensah becomes the fourth Ghanaian to fight for the World Title this year after Habib Ahmed, Maxwell Awuku and Isaac Dogboe