A woman has fallen well short of delivering a rousing New Zealand national anthem to fire up a Kiwi boxer before his title fight.
Tessa King was called up last minute to sing our glorious national anthem ahead of Kiwi David Light’s World Boxing Organisation (WBO) world cruiserweight title fight against Lawrence Okolie. Let’s just say she got some of the lines right, some.
“Hear our voices we retreat,” is one she didn’t quite nail. Same with “at the shafts of strife and war.”
To be fair to Tessa, she really did try her best. You can see her checking her phone for the lyrics (I assume) while singing, and she even posted the clip to her Instagram after the fact, implicitly admitting defeat and offering an explanation.
“POV: You get asked to sing a song you’ve never heard in your life in front of 21,000 people just a few hours before,” she wrote.
“Anyone normal would have turned this job down but it is I! I had the best time,” she added.
That’s a good sport right there. And I’m gonna say her performance is better than Fergie’s infamous rendition of the US National anthem which had NBA All-Stars literally cracking up as it was happening.
It was just a bad night all around for New Zealand at AO Arena in Manchester, as David ‘the Great White’ Light lost the title bought, possibly thrown off by the national anthem’s rendition.
He did manage to take the reigning champion the full twelve rounds but lost by unanimous decision.
Issac Peach, Light’s trainer was disappointed with the refereeing but admitted the better boxer won the fight.
“Watching Lawrence on TV is a lot different from being in the ring with Lawrence, he is extremely big,” Peach told Stuff. “The way he fights makes it so f…ing hard to get there [up close]!" he said.
“Every time David's going to try and get there [on the inside] it's dangerous. It's f…ing effective and I think Lawrence is by far the best cruiserweight in the world. I don't think anyone beats him after that.”
