A Canadian heavyweight title wasn’t in the cards for Oceanside pro boxer Shane “Shotgun” Andreesen this time around, as the kid from Qualicum Beach lost his bid for the belt in Windsor, Ontario Saturday night by unanimous decision.
According to fightnews.com’s Lev Jackson, Toronto’s Neven “No Surrender” Pajkic, 35, beat Andreesen, 29, by unanimous decision with the scores reading 100-90, 100-90, 99-91.
Andreesen weighed the lightest of his career at 218 compared to Pajkic, 35, who weighed 235 “but it made no difference in the outcome. Like 2008, Andreesen lost a wide spread decision against Pajkic.”
“I wouldn’t say it was a long flight home like some others were,” Andreesen’s trainer/manger Richard LeStage surmised when The News caught up with him, but conceded there was a lot of reflecting going on aboard the West-bound flight to Vancouver.
“Oy yeah, absolutely, especially as a trainer, you go over everything trying to figure out what the problem was,” said LeStage. “The problem is Shane just didn’t perform, and there are no excuses for it.”
Shotgun, he said, “weighed in a bit lighter than we expected, but he looked fantastic. He really did do everything he needed to do for himself. The thing is the preparation to win the Canadian title was 95 percent, the last five percent was fighting the fight, and that didn’t happen, right in the first 30 seconds of the fight you could tell it just wasn’t going to happen (and) there was no one more surprised than me,” he said.
Shotgun’s flown the coop for Christmas break, but LeStage says “Shane’s talking about his next fight already. We’ll talk when he gets back.
“At the end of the day my feeling is that once again we have taken a fighter d from his first day in the gym as an amateur (Shane was around 11), who had good amateur success (some six different titles), and he earned the right to challenge for the Canadian title.
“Nobody gave that fight to him, nobody else in the country earned that right to fight for the Canadian title, he was the mandatory challenger for Nevan. Nevan didn’t have a choice, and you can’t lose sight of the fact that’s a big thing all in itself. Shane didn’t win the Canadian title, but years from now he’ll be able to tell his kids he earned the right to challenge for it.
“There’s an old saying you play soccer, you play hockey, you don’t play boxing. It’s for real, and when you have a bad day in boxing there’s no one to pass the puck to, Shane had a bad day,” said LeStage, but you know what, he had the stones to stand in there with the reigning Canadian heavyweight champion for 10 rounds.”