{"id":592785,"date":"2026-04-08T05:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/592785\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T05:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:40:08","slug":"boxing-francis-waitai-drops-in-rankings-after-split-decision-loss-to-max-reeves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/592785\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing: Francis Waitai drops in rankings after split decision loss to Max Reeves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heafey and Fear both saw Reeves as a very clear winner, with Heafey\u2019s scores meaning Waitai only won one round and Fear\u2019s scores meaning Waitai only won two rounds.<\/p>\n

While two New Zealand boxing insiders agree Reeves came away as the winner, they believe it was a close fight, unlike what the judges\u2019 scores indicate.<\/p>\n

New Zealand boxing commentator Isaac Savage said that, in his view, Waitai won at least three or four rounds and that he would have scored the fight 96-94.<\/p>\n

BX-9 promoter Oz Jabur also said that in his view, the fight was quite close.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It was a] great performance by Waitai. He was getting the better of Reeves in the inside exchanges,\u201d Jabur said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe southpaw cross was landing heavy. Many effective damaging blows were landed by Waitai.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last round was the deciding round in my eyes, and Reeves did a little more. Fair outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waitai said on social media that it had been a pleasure to showcase his skills in Australia, on the Tim Tszyu undercard<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot the result we wanted, but I left it all in the ring … Thanks to my opponent and his team for a great fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waitai\u2019s team, Team George Promotions, accepted the loss and result.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a war, Francis Waitai is always a tough competitor and a hard man at this high level,\u201d they said on social media.<\/p>\n

\" Francis Waitai (second from right) and his team ahead of the fight in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, a split decision went to the Aussie on this occasion. Respect to Max Reeves and his team, a bunch of great guys.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bit of R&R after a hard-fought fight and regroup for team Waitai.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waitai has dropped in the BoxRec rankings from top 90 to top 130.<\/p>\n

To get back to where he was, he will need to have two significant international wins next.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Watt is a retired boxing judge and New Zealand boxing writer with a decade of experience. Watt has also been BoxRec\u2019s New Zealand record-keeper since 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heafey and Fear both saw Reeves as a very clear winner, with Heafey\u2019s scores meaning Waitai only won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[9490,1914,64,63,81,16485,802,26359,101406,1913,156428,4717,6010,31409,1629,40889,220885,3410,79003,26358,85,1643,8821,319,16484,156429],"class_list":{"0":"post-592785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-after","9":"tag-against","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-australian","13":"tag-boxer","14":"tag-boxing","15":"tag-decision","16":"tag-drops","17":"tag-fight","18":"tag-francis","19":"tag-in","20":"tag-loss","21":"tag-lost","22":"tag-max","23":"tag-middleweight","24":"tag-oriental","25":"tag-rankings","26":"tag-reeves","27":"tag-split","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-super","30":"tag-title","31":"tag-to","32":"tag-waikato","33":"tag-waitai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}