Trainer Rosales relieved as Lindenmuth keeps title

LOS LUNAS — A wild and crazy Egyptian experience appears to be over for Bosque Farms boxer Katherine “Kat” Lindenmuth and her trainer Anthony Rosales.

It ended with the World Boxing Association confirming that the victory Lindenmuth scored Nov. 14 against Kazakhstan’s Angelina Lukas in Cairo is final.

Of course, in the world of professional boxing, is anything final?

“They did grant her the title. She is the winner,” Rosales said in his Los Lunas gym after the boxing organization announced that Lindenmuth’s win by split-decision would stand.

The uproar, which partially centered on a drug test that wasn’t taken, first started after the result was announced in the ring. The decision sent the Lukas entourage, including the promoter with close ties to Lukas, into a frenzy.

“The guy goes ballistic,” Rosales said about the promoter, who was yelling at the judges and WBA officials. “He tried to bulldog them.”

The fear for Rosales and Lindenmuth reached an apex at that time. Lukas’ camp, about 20-strong, crowded into the ring near the three-person Lindenmuth team, according to Rosales. However the tension, and strangeness, started much earlier.

Rosales described a scale at the official weigh-in that was not accurate, with officials finally saying, “Oh, you guys are good.”

There was a promotional weigh-in for the media that was held late at night at a hookah bar, which Rosales said was engulfed by heavy smoke. A new contract needed to be signed hours before the fight because the promoter changed the weight class.

Plus, there was a dispute over the gloves the fighters would wear. Rosales said Lukas was set to use a thin pair of worn gloves while Lindenmuth was offered “a new, much bigger,” set.

“We’re arguing and arguing, and I said, ‘This isn’t how it works,’” Rosales recalled.

Finally, a call to WBA headquarters resolved the dispute.

Leading up to the bout, Lindenmuth was whisked away several times, with a stop at a museum and visit to the pyramids for a camel ride.

“The day before the fight, we’re riding a freakin’ camel. I had to suck it up,” said Rosales, who had never even ridden a horse.

“Everybody is mad dogging us, hating on us,” Rosales remembered of the arena the night of the match, comparing the scene to the film Rocky IV. (Spoiler alert: In the movie, Rocky Balboa travels to Russia and defeats Ivan Drago, while winning over the hostile crowd.)

In an attempt to break the ice with the fans, Rosales had Lindenmuth “walk around the facility” during the preliminaries. “The tension kind of started mellowing out a little bit.”

When the fight started, Rosales said the crowd “started loving her, like in Rocky. They started praising her,” because of Lindenmuth’s attacking-style.

Then came a series of events. The disputed decision. The three-day wait to be given a drug test from the promoter that never came. The bombshell news back on U.S. soil that Egyptian boxing officials stripped Lindenmuth of the title.

A formal drug test followed in Albuquerque, with results unknown at News-Bulletin print time. Lindenmuth has maintained that she has never doped. Not taking a drug test in Egypt may have been a blessing, with Rosales expressing concerns about tampering.

“We kept catching them in little lies,” he said. “Little lies, every time.”

Finally, the WBA verified that Lindenmuth retained her championship title. Despite that declaration, Lindenmuth has yet to be paid her $5,000 purse.

“It was a learning process,” Rosales said of the entire adventure, which has not discouraged Team Kat from looking to the future.

An offer for a Dec. 27 fight was declined, Rosales said, because it was too close to Christmas. However, Rosales teased a possible bout “in the near future, but we’re going to make sure we have our ducks in a row.”

Rosales confirmed that the fight would, yet again, be in a foreign country. It would not be, however, in Egypt or against Lukas.