Kana defies all odds to get rewarded for all his magnificent work
HE does not even possess an office nor a laptop and/or top-of-the-range smartphone but Luyanda Kana goes about doing his matchmaking job without a glitch.
Now he has been finally recognised for his job after he was voted as Boxing SA Matchmaker of the Year winner at the national boxing awards ceremony at Boardwalk Casino in Port Elizabeth last weekend.
While he sauntered up the podium to accept the accolade, Kana hid an inner pain which confronts his family every time he does his job .
And that is that of not being paid by some promoters who use his services.
This has made him to go through rough patches in life even unable to send his kids to school.
But again he is not about to throw in the towel to the sport he loves conforming to the notion that once a boxing bug bite one remains bitten forever.
The boxing seeds were sowed in an unlikely place when he was inspired by the late sports minister Rev Makhankesi Stofile while serving a lengthy term in prison for political involvement.
When he was released on parole, Kana took many roles before eventually settling to that of a matchmaker.
“I love boxing with all my heart and it gives me great satisfaction when I see two kids slugging it out with fans screaming their lungs out,” he said.
While he had nothing to show for his dedicated work since missing out on winning the Matchmaker of the Year award in dubious circumstances, Kana never got disillusioned.
Instead he upped the tempo as he even spread his work to other provinces including Gauteng which organised more tournaments than Eastern Cape landing credence to a belief that Kana would again miss out on the award.
“People did not understand that Abbey Mnisi [Gauteng matchmaker] actually sought my help in some of the tournaments he worked on,” Kana argued.
His arguments stems from remarks on social media questioning his win instead of Mnisi on the basis that Mnisi’s province organised more tournaments than Kana’s.
However on close inspection it turned out that Mnisi actually had nothing to do with the majority of tournaments organised in Gauteng.
One BSA official told the adjudication committee of which this scribe is a member that Kana actually match-made more tournaments than Mnisi.
This does not surprise Kana who had to field a few dissidents who felt he did not deserve the award.
“But the majority of people who were at Boardwalk Casino [PE] or those who watched the awards on television congratulated me in droves, happy that I ultimately received the award after the heartache of missing out last year.”
Matchmaking may be one of the jobs frowned upon by boxing stakeholders but it forms a crucial part of the success and the failure of a tournament.
For instance a matchmaker must know all the boxers and their managers or trainers so that when organising a tournament he can swiftly call them to offer them a fight.
Not only must he know them but it would be most appropriate to have a database with the records, fighting styles and technique of the boxers.
But Kana does not have a database to tap into this information when organising a bout.
“I do not even have a laptop or office to store the names of boxers and trainers so you can imagine how hard it is for me to have this information,” he says.
“I use my head to store all this information and when I am asked to organise a bout I immediately tap into my memory about a boxer I saw and do a mental bout before deciding to do it.”
While all other challenges go with the thrill of the game, getting owed by promoters is the hardest part of the profession.
And this despite the fact that a matchmaker is now a licensee and has to pay a licence fee to Boxing SA.
In that score one would think that BSA should intervene when matchmakers are owed their fees.
“But it does not happen at all,” said Kana.
“In fact in my case even BSA-Eastern Cape manager Phakamile Jacobs knows about my plight but he does nothing about it.”
There those who not only meet their end of the bargain but go out of their way to help out when Kana has personal problems.
“People like Teris Ntutu of Rumble Africa go out of their way to help out and I highly appreciate them. They give me impetus to carry on and surmount any obstacle.”