TALKING to Quaise Khademi and Ijaz Ahmed, it quickly turns into clear the very last thing they need to do is battle one another once more.
“It’s one of those things,” shrugged Ahmed after it was introduced Warren Boxing Management will stage their fourth battle on the York Hall in Bethnal Green on Friday, December 2.
“It’s just something we have got to do.”
The reward is, the winner will name themselves British super-flyweight champion – if there is a winner, that is.
Of their three earlier fights, Ahmed received the primary on a majority factors vote and the final two have ended in attracts, together with their conflict in Telford in June.
Khademi would have received that battle had he not been docked some extent in the ninth spherical for holding, whereas Ahmed is satisfied he was a transparent winner.
The 29 yr outdated from Birmingham instructed [i]Boxing News[i]: “I don’t know how they gave it a draw. The whole fight, he was on the back foot. He must have run five or six miles in that fight. Every round I caught him with the cleaner shots. I don’t know what the judges were watching. I can’t believe that if they hadn’t taken a point off him I would have lost.”
Both fighters are agreed on one factor. They are sick of the sight of one another.
So eager was Khademi to get Ahmed out of the best way, he was prepared to dip into his personal pocket.
The Afghanistan-born East Ender remembered: “He mentioned after [the third fight]: ‘I don’t need to battle him once more’ and I mentioned the identical.
“He needed to return to my home as a visitor. We weren’t going to battle once more. Then he determined to battle me for a fourth time.
“I provided him step apart cash out of my very own pocket so I might battle Marcel Braithwaite as a substitute.
“Deep down, I don’t think he wants the fight, but his team are pushing him. There was nowhere else for him to go.”
Ahmed says he was made a proposal by Khademi, however that “it didn’t make any sense” to simply accept it.
“I couldn’t just give it away,” he added.
“If there was a situation where he could give me enough money, get me a fight and guarantee on paper he would step down if he won the British title, it could have happened, but nothing was guaranteed.”
The solely assure is that Khademi-Ahmed IV is certain to be shut – and watchable.
The fighters could not need the battle, however those that watch it ought to get pleasure from it.
The first battle between them went forward behind closed doorways on the BT Sport studios in February, 2021.
Ahmed was the front-foot aggressor, Khademi the boxer who likes to battle – and they produced a fight-of-the-year contender over 10 rounds for a sanctioning belt.
Ahmed received a majority vote – one decide had it degree, the others had him one and two factors up – after a battle that TV pundits Richie Woodhall and Josh Taylor had Khademi successful.
“Nobody would have guessed we would still be fighting each other after that first fight,” mentioned Ahmed, however as soon as Sunny Edwards vacated the British title, the Board paired them collectively once more for the 115lbs belt.
For Woodhall, the rematch, in Birmingham final August, “eclipsed” the primary battle
There have been fixed shifts all through – typically two or three in the house of a spherical – and so shut have been many of the rounds, Woodhall felt the result could possibly be determined in the ultimate 10 seconds.
At the ultimate bell, Khademi was up by some extent on one card, Ahmed led by two on one other and the third decide scored the battle a draw.
The third battle was set for final December earlier than Khademi was dominated out with an Anterior Cruciate Ligament harm.
When the battle went forward in June, Khademi had Richard Sawyer in his nook after splitting from John Tandy and caught to the hit-and-move gameplan fairly higher than he did in the primary two fights.
But he did an excessive amount of holding for the referee and that value him the battle.
Both fighters instructed BT Sport afterwards that they had no curiosity in a fourth battle, however as Ahmed put it: “Circumstances mean it had to happen.”
Ahmed hopes the battle might occur 24 hours sooner than scheduled, on the undercard of the Tyson Fury-Dereck Chisora conflict at Tottenham Hotspurs Stadium.
He mentioned: ”I’ve despatched a message to Queensberry [Promotions] to say: ‘Why not put it on the Fury show?’ It‘s by no means a boring battle between us.”
Ahmed says that wherever the battle goes forward, it should finish in a knockout.
He mentioned: “I have beaten him three times already and I’m having to fight him again. It looks like I’m going to have to stop him this time.”
Khademi is in settlement, saying: “We have to end it for real this time.”
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