Money woes KO boxing tourney

title against Lovewell Maphosa of Bulawayo in the main bout, has been postponed to a later date after the promoters failed to raise the purse money for the boxers.
Black Fist Boxing Promotions chairman, Napal Mandiwa, and secretary-general, Chris Gaska, said today’s tournament has been put off due to financial constraints.
“We have, in the past few weeks, been running around trying to raise the purse money for the boxers but to no avail. So, we’ve postponed this tournament to a later date.
“We’ve been trying to court some top Government officials asking them to bankroll this tournament but we haven’t received favourable response from them, thus our decision to postpone this tournament,” Mandiwa and Gaska said.
Matchmaker Abel Josamu, who was heavily involved in the organisation of this tournament, also confirmed the latest development, saying they were now likely to stage the event on March 1 at the same venue.
“We had put everything in place but unfortunately we came across a number of obstacles which forced us to postpone this tournament.
“The other thing which caused this is that I was involved in a road accident in Mbare on Wednesday where I was hit by a car and I sustained some back injuries.
“This also forced me to stop running around looking for the boxers’ purse money but I’m quite convinced that we will stage this tournament on March 1,” Josamu said.
Local lightweight boxer Misheck Kondwani, who was also involved in organising this tournament, added that the main problem behind its postponement was the failure by the promoters to raise the purse money for the boxers in time for today’s event.
“They (the promoters) should have deposited the boxers purse money with the local boxing control board at least a week before the tournament but they failed to do so.
“This has seen them (Black Fist Boxing Promotions) shelving their initial plans of staging this tournament this weekend and we hope they are going to come up with a new date when they have managed to raise enough funds for the boxers’ purse money.”
Kondwani is scheduled to leave the country at the beginning of next week for Lusaka, Zambia, where he will take on Zambian Noel Banda in an international non-title fight on February 17.