Boxing promoter controversy Two promising boxers from Mossel Bay - Bulelani Ngondeka and Mbulelo Gubula - were also booked to show their talent in front of their home crowd.
Boxing bouts which would have been a first for Mossel Bay, as well as an encouragement for developing boxers, have not materialises and this seems to be a knock for the town's image and future in boxing.
As part of the Mossel Bay Sport and Recreation Festival, Plettenberg Bay boxer Unathi "Golden Boy" Mndwana would have fought for the vacant Western Cape junior bantamweight title against Ntandozo Dliwako from Cape Town.
The current Western Cape junior flyweight champion Nwabisile Colani was also featured on the bill.
Two promising boxers from Mossel Bay - Bulelani Ngondeka and Mbulelo Gubula - who both turned professional early this year, were also booked to show their talent in front of their home crowd.
For the event booked for Saturday, 13 October, spectators who bought tickets arrived at the venue, Imekhaya Primary School, but no fists were lifted as the man organising the fights, David Faas, who claims to still be a member of Universal Boxing Promotions in Cape Town, did not arrive.
Faas had publicised the fights in local print, online and radio platforms.
Since the beginning of this week, he has not answered his phone. The Mossel Bay Advertiser managed to trace Faas online, in a post where he advertised the event as firstclass boxing on the cards for Mossel Bay.
There he advertises the tickets for R150 per person, different from the R50 per person mentioned in the local media.
Faas was in Port Elizabeth when the Mossel Bay Advertiser got hold of him. He claimed to be without any money and said: "It was supposed to be a R60 000 event and I made nothing so I had to call it off two days prior to 13 October."
The Mossel Bay Advertiser got hold of a company that sponsored him R10 000 upfront, as well as other sponsors. It has been confirmed that in the Oudtshoorn Defence Infantry School as well as at PetroSA, several tickets for the bouts were sold.
Faas claimed he did not receive the money from the boxers and friends who helped him to sell tickets at the two establishments, as well as elsewhere. On the issue of thousands of rands sponsored for the event,
Faas said:
"I also have to live.
I must eat and make use of public transport."
He confirmed there were signed contracts worth R4 000 per boxer - win or lose.
But Faas said: "If an event is called off Boxing South Africa must pay them 10% of the value of the contract."
In this case, he claimed it to be R400 per boxer. "The rest will be paid in full when the event actually takes place.
"I'm not going to run away. I'm an honest man and the event will take place when there's money."
He did not want to say how much money he already had and kept on saying he needed money to live.
In Mossel Bay people in the boxing community are up in arms. The Mossel Bay Advertiser spoke to several, some of whom said they would lay charges at the police.
On Wednesday afternoon Faas called the Mossel Bay Advertiser and asked that this article not be published. "It will do damage to my image and career."