M’sane throws door open for slugfest

THE Mdantsane Indoor Centre will host an Open Boxing League (OBL) this Saturday.

Andile Mofu, the president of South African National Amateur Boxing Organisation (Sanabo) confirmed the development at the launch of OBL in Tsakanane, Boksburg, at the weekend.

Mofu, who paid tribute to then sports minister Fikile Mbalula for injecting R10-million into the project which is aimed at producing boxers for both the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, next year and the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020.

The launch in Boksburg, which featured eight male and two female bouts, was attended by Deputy Sports Minister Gert Oosthuizen and director-general of sports Alec Moemi.

“We are very happy that finally this has happened,” said Mofu.

The OBL was supposed to have kicked off in February but had to be shelved due to some logistics.

“We will only be back in Tsakane in August to start with OBL,” said Mofu.

The president the league involves all nine provinces and each will have 10 males and five female boxers.

“We have divided nine provinces into two corners – red and blue,” he said.

“Five provinces in the red corner are the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State and their action begins at Mdantsane Indoor Centre on Saturday. It will take five weeks to get number one and number two.

“In the blue corner we have North West, Gauteng, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Action will take place in Gauteng and the venue is yet to be confirmed.

“After that we will skip a week before staging the finals at Mdantsane Indoor Centre. Winners will walk away with gold medals while losers will settle for silver and bronze.”

Sanabo will then select a national team to participate in the championships to be hosted by Angola. He said the bigger picture is to send boxers to the African Championships, which are the qualifiers for the World Championships coming later in the year.

South Africa had no boxers at the 2016 Rio Olympics last August, for the first time since readmission to the international sports arena.