Boxing returns with pro-am card
BOXING RETURNS to the local scene at 8 o’clock tonight with a seven-bout pro-am card at the Barbican Beach Sports Complex on East Kings House Road in St Andrew.
Five of the bouts will be amateur contests, with Jamaica going up against The Cayman Islands. The other two will be six-round professional bouts featuring Jamaican boxers Sakima Mullings and Jermaine Bowen going up against foreign opponents over six rounds each.
The Jamaica Boxing Board is promoting the amateur section of the card, while two new promoters, I-Fight Promotions and Creative Sports, will be in charge of the professional bouts. The sponsors are Usain Bolt Tracks and Records, Locker Room Sports, and Stonleigh Coffee.
The feature bout will be between Jamaican crowd favourite Sakima Mullings and Courtney McCleave from the United States, while Jamaican Jermaine Bowen goes up against Trinidadian Sheldon Lawrence. Mullings, who is the 2014 Contender Welterweight champion, has an impressive 18-2 record. He should have been fighting a boxer from The Bahamas, but this was cancelled because it was reported that this boxer suffered severe personal losses during Hurricane Matthew and could not keep the fight date. McCleave who agreed to the fight on short notice, has a 1-4 record, but this has not dampened his enthusiasm, and he is hoping to play the role of giant killer. Bowen, who is a dogged fighter, has been inactive for over a year and takes a one win and three losses record into his fight with Lawrence, who has had five fights and won them all inside the distance.
JAMAICA VS CAYMAN
The five amateur bouts on the card will see Jamaican boxers going up against their counterparts from Cayman in the first half of an exchange programme.
In the first bout, Jamaicans Samuel Grant and Collel Hogg will exchange punches. There will be a female novice bout between Keron Thomas from Jamaica and Cayman’s Chambria Dalhouse. Daniel Hylton will go up against Cayman’s Alexander Smith, and Ricardo Carter, Jamaica’s outstanding lightweight boxer, goes up against promising Eduardo Montalvo. The curtain will come down on the evening with hard-hitting Jamaican Alando Lewis taking on Cayman’s Dariel Ebanks in a light heavyweight contest that is expected to be the highlight of the programme.