Toto ‘Gugs Gang’ Helebe has taken enough beating in just two fights this year and has since announced his retirement from boxing after he was stopped by Tanzanian boxer Nasibu Ramadhani Shemtendwa during their fight at the Super Dome Arena in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania.
After taking too much punishment from Morogoro-based Shemtendwa, the hurt former South African bantamweight champion decided not to answer to the bell at the beginning of the seventh round.
This was Cala-born Helebe’s second successive stoppage loss this year. Helebe failed to answer to the bell at the beginning of the fourth round when he fought against Lerato Dlamini in July.
Before meeting Dlamini, Helebe, who won the SA bantamweight title after he stunned Phumzile Matyhila stopping him in the fifth round in front of a partisan crowd at the Orient Theatre in East London in June 2012, hadn’t fought in three years and six months.
During his days as a professional boxer, Helebe once challenged then International Boxing Organisation (IBO) junior-featherweight champion Thabo Sonjica and lost by a first round stoppage at the Orient Theatre in June 2014.
The 37-year-old Helebe retired from the fistic sport after registering 20 wins with nine of those being knockouts and losing nine times in the process.
