Sunday shot

Why I shun Malawi boxing

I am not an ardent boxing fan for I find the fascination of two people agreeing to senselessly pound each other, worse still in the head, so morbid.

But such is the split allegiance of a Malawian sports reporter, you have to cover 30-plus sports codes and end up being an expert reporter of nothing.

It is for this divided allegiance that I have found myself covering bouts.

The last I must have watched was a crowd-puller between Osgood Kayuni and Tanzanian Allan Kamote at Motel Paradise, Blantyre early this year.

Kayuni was declared the winner on split points’ decision that defied what happened in the ring.

I, like many fans such as Michael ‘Manganya’ Usi and Jai ‘Mr Entertainer’ Banda, felt either a win for the Tanzanian or a draw could have been a fair deal for this non-title fight.

Unsurprisingly, Jai called the Malawian judges’ scoring a ‘home town decision’ while Usi said, with such bias, he would be reluctant to patronise future fights. Other boxers present confided in me that the result was an outright daylight robbery to Kamote.

Since that time, I have never been to another fight. And you would think I am still bitter with the judges’ decision. Not really.

It was rather the dilly-dallying leading to the headline fight that drained my thin boxing interest.

The delay it took for the main boxers to step onto the ring was an outright insult.

Even more, to those who paid to watch them.

The fight fans paid to watch at 3 pm started at 6 pm.

The ringside announcer kept assuring the fans that the boxers would come after a minute, even when he meant after three hours.

What was clear was that the boxing fans, packed like sardines, were being taken for a ride.

Since that time I have never regretted missing local bouts. Even more considering that such taking each other for granted is getting worse; fans are being cheated into paying for fights that never take place.

Come to think of fans paying to watch Agnes Mtimaukanena’s presumed fight against a mysterious Ugandan.

That the boxing fans were kept in the dark until the very time of the Robin’s Park bout to learn that Mtimaukanena had, after all, no opponent, speak volumes of the rot.

All this happens when Malawi Boxing Association and the Professional Boxing Control Board seem clueless and hopeless when it comes to regulating boxing.

With the two boxing entities warring over each others’ jurisdiction, it appears no one is, realistically, in control of Malawi boxing.

The restructuring of Malawi boxing, which took place at Sun Village in Liwonde in 2008, injected a new lease of life. There is now revived enthusiasm and passion.

But let me deliver a jab that this restructuring should have continued, otherwise it brought with it some bad elements bent on profiteering.

It seems every Jim and Jack can, from nowhere, cruise into the professional boxing ranks.

It seems every entrepreneur in town, with no clue about boxing, can get effortlessly a promoters’ licence.

In football, those wishing to become players’ agents undergo rigorous examinations, why should it be free-for-all in boxing?

Where you have boxing officials also slipping into jackets of judges and promoters, then you know something is wrong. Big time.

Malawi boxing needs a second overhaul; otherwise it is heading for a knock-out (KO).

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