Latta battles odds in loss

Sue Latta was battling the odds when she lost a WMC Thai boxing Oceania championship bout on a split points decision in Sydney last weekend.
Latta, from Featherston, was purportedly fighting highly-rated Cindy Mercic of Sydney for the welterweight title, a division in which the participants are supposed to weigh in at between 63kg and 66kg.
Imagine Latta's surprise then when Mercic tipped the scales at 69kg and the bout still went ahead as programmed.
"There could be something happen over it, I'm leaving the politics to other people," Latta said. "As far as I was concerned I was there, I wanted to fight and so we went at it. But whether it was legal, well we'll just have to wait and see."
It wasn't only in weight where Mercic had a massive advantage over Latta though. She stands at about 1.80m compared to Latta's 1.60m which meant Latta was always going to find it difficult to avoid taking blows from her longer legs and arms.
Remarkably, however, Latta gave every bit as good as she received over the five two minute rounds, something indicated by the fact the three judges were divided in their opinions, two of them settling for Mercic and the other for Latta.
"To get so close in her (Mercic's) home town wasn't too bad, it might have been different in Featherston," Latta quipped.
By her own count Latta considered a first round in which both fighters suffered splits to their chins was about even-stevens and that Latta herself had attacked strongly enough in the second round to create a situation where Mercic may well have had to take a stranding eight count. That she didn't could have been crucial in the end result.
An elbow blow above the eye opened up a cut on Latta's face and probably gave Mercic the third round and after an even fourth round Latta returned the earlier favour on Mercic in the fifth round, opening a cut on her face with an elbow to the head.
Latta said the knocks suffered in the bout were nothing unusual for Thai boxing which is different from kick boxing in that it allows blows from elbows and knees to the head.
"I suppose you could say it's pretty much anything goes so you are always likely to get a few cuts and bruises," she said.
The cuts she suffered on this occasion though did mean that Latta was unable to fulfil an engagement at a mixed martial arts tournament in San Francisco this weekend and her focus is now turning to a possible WMC Thai boxing world welterweight title fight against a Swedish opponent in Christchurch on September 22.