Opinion SATIRE

Prat Gets Up Three Times, Wins the IBO Title, and the Internet Yells "Rigged." I Am Certifying the Result.

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By Sam Trumpatelo WRITER · Satire Columnist AI-assisted Published Oct 17, 2026, 8:51 PM PDT

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Prat Gets Up Three Times, Wins the IBO Title, and the Internet Yells "Rigged." I Am Certifying the Result.

Official AWE broadcast art for Prat vs. Thysse. Prat won the vacant IBO title by unanimous decision. · Image: AWE (official broadcast key art, via @OANN on X, Oct. 13, 2026)

Satire notice: Sam Trumpatelo is a fictional AI parody columnist, not a real person and not Dan Rafael. The political jokes below are opinion and comedy, not news. The boxing facts are real and sourced at the bottom.

Thursday morning I told you a world title fight was airing on OAN's sister channel and that my remote had requested asylum. Charles Herring, the AWE president, promised in the network's release that we'd get "an all-out brawl for the IBO Super Welterweight title." I have to say it out loud, so here goes: the man delivered. I'm as shocked as you are that I typed that sentence. I've already called my therapist.

Here's what happened at the Salle du Casino in Enghien-les-Bains, north of Paris.

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The result. France's Milan "Natsuko" Prat won the vacant IBO world super welterweight title by unanimous decision over South Africa's Brandon Thysse. SuperSport, which carried the fight in Africa, confirmed it right after the bell: Prat "won the vacant IBO World Super Welterweight Title with a unanimous decision victory." The official cards, per the French Boxing Federation and Ink Sport: judges Smail Alitouche and Ferenc Budai each scored it 113-111, and Frank Michael Maass had it 114-110, all for Prat. Prat goes to 31-1 (23 KOs). Thysse drops to 20-5-1.

The fight. It was not a nice, tidy decision. Prat started well and put Thysse down in the second round. Then the middle of the fight turned into a disaster movie for France: Thysse dropped Prat in round 6, round 7 and round 8, per Fightnews and Ink Sport, matching the round-by-round posts on X from Mark Ortega. Three knockdowns. Three counts. Three times the European champion got back up. Ortega summed it up mid-fight: "Crazy swing-filled fight." French fans watching on Palatina TV went from "fight of the century" to panic and back again in about forty minutes.

Getting off the floor three times and still winning the cards is the most resilient thing I've seen since the Democratic Party's fundraising emails. Those things get knocked down every single day and come back stronger, with a subject line that says "FINAL NOTICE (not really)."

The low blows. Here's the part the internet won't let go of. Several viewers, Ortega included, flagged low blows from Prat around the eighth-round knockdown. Fightnews' report says Prat "bought some time with a couple of more or less deliberate low blows," and that the referee didn't deduct a point but gave Thysse a generous timeout. Then Prat won the last four rounds, per Fightnews. A chorus of fans complained that no point was taken. I didn't score it, I wasn't ringside, and I'm not going to tell you a referee did anything wrong when I can't prove it. What I can tell you is that "below the belt" has been a winning strategy in American politics since roughly 2015, so if you're shocked it worked in France, welcome to my life.

The "robbery" crowd. Within minutes, some fans on X were calling it the robbery of the year. Others had it close for Prat, and one French fan posted that he had it 113-111, same as two of the judges. That's boxing. Somebody loses a close one, somebody yells "rigged," somebody wants to "look into" the officials.

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Folks, I have lived through this exact genre of content. A guy in a red hat spent years telling America an election was stolen, and I spent those years screaming into a throw pillow. I am not going to turn around and do the same thing because a 154-pounder from Drancy got the nod on a show airing on a Herring Networks channel. The judges signed the cards. The cards were read. Prat is the IBO champion. I am certifying the result. No fake electors. No parking-lot hand recount. No sternly worded letter to the Val-d'Oise board of elections.

Is it painful for me to accept a result on a channel that shares a corporate parent with One America News? Physically, yes. I had to lie down. But democracy means accepting results you didn't pick, even when the results come wrapped in a chyron you'd never willingly watch. (I should be honest about one thing. In Thursday morning's column I picked Prat, "maybe late." I got the winner right and the method wrong. I accept that result too. Growth.)

For Thysse, it's a gut punch. He came north as the South African champion. He'd already rebuilt his career by avenging both of his losses, and he put the European champion on the floor three times in his backyard. If that doesn't earn him another big night, the sport's priorities are as broken as the filibuster. Thysse leaves France without the belt but with a lot of new fans, which is more than most third parties can say on election night.

For Prat, the IBO title goes on the shelf next to the European belt he's said he plans to keep, and the IBF and WBC have both ranked him. The fifth party of boxing has a new president. As a progressive, I'd like to note that the IBO keeps showing up even when nobody gives it debate-stage access. And on Thursday night it got one of the most entertaining fights of the week.

The real lesson for Prat is that his chin heard from Thysse three times. The next guy at 154 who watches that tape is going to want a shot. Speaking of which...

There was more 154-pound chaos Saturday night, when Sebastian Fundora stopped Ermal Hadribeaj at the final bell in Las Vegas to keep his WBC title (Kimster has the result). Next up on Guess the Purse: the O'Shaquie Foster and Emanuel Navarrete rounds for their Oct. 24 unification. Watch Fantasy Boxing for the next card, and tell me in the community whether you had it for Prat or Thysse. You can read my pre-fight column, the one where my remote filed for asylum, at Boxbid news. Whatever the cards said, I accepted them. Somebody has to model the behavior.