Boxing championships in Hwange

divisions from lightweight to heavyweight. Zaba technical director, Petros Masiyambumbi, said most of the provinces have confirmed their participation.
“Preparations are at an advanced stage. I spoke to the hosts on Saturday and they have confirmed their state of preparedness, they are ready to host the championships, which is good.
“All provinces have confirmed their participation and most teams are already in camp because this is a major tournament.
“It’s a title championship with those who would have won getting the title in their respective categories. We are going to have 10 weight categories from lightweight to heavyweight. In the women’s section we would have 10 categories as well because we don’t usually have the super heavyweight fighters,” said Masiyambumbi.
The Zimbabwe National Army are the defending champions after their fighters won most of the weight divisions last year but Masiyambumbi said this year’s edition is unpredictable as most provinces have improved and anyone can dominate the competition.
“We expect big surprises as we witnessed in Bindura where Mashonaland Central came from nowhere and put up a good show.
“They had never dominated any national event in boxing but they had very good guys who took part and won at the national invitational tournament.
“We are looking forward to a serious competition and it is unpredictable, anyone can win. ZNA should not relax because they will be surprised,” said Masiyambumbi.
Each province is expected to field 10 fighters in each section from the senior to the juniors.
“These are the national championships and each province will field a boxer for each weight division which means it will be a total of 10 for each and a total of 30 boxers for each province.
“We are going to conduct a draw in which the boxers will be paired and they will fight each other in the preliminary with the winners progressing to the quarterfinals, semi-finals and the finals, so each person would at least have four matches to the finals,” said Masiyambumbi.
The championships were initially set for October 27 but were moved to November to accommodate adequate preparations for the hosts.