adminbeing staged by the Zimbabwe Kickboxing Association.
Participants will compete in five categories – lightweight, light-welter-weight, welterweight, middleweight and heavyweight.
The national association held a similar tournament last month in which they were promoting fighters to turn professional and Zika president, Tony Kamangira, said the event is mainly for upgrading super amateur fighters.
“We want to identify super amateur fighters. This tournament is also for upgrading our fighters. We had another tournament recently and the same people who participated in the previous event are mostly the same that are coming for this one but we have added a few more fighters.
“We are looking forward to a good performance from the fighters because this is also in preparation of an international event we are going to hold in November.
“We want our fighters to be able to execute their skills when they compete in international events,” said Kamangira.
Kamangira said the tournament will kick-start with a workshop for referees and judges and they will be practically examined during today’s competition.
“We are going to start with a workshop for referees and judges in the afternoon.
“We want to prepare them to be able to host events. It will be a Level One course. We are pushing for every province to have qualified officials.
“After this course they will have another course in November when we hold an international tournament and we have instructors from Finland who are going to work with them during that tournament,” said Kamangira.
Today’s tournament will feature 16 fighters from Harare and Beitbridge with some of the fighters expected to compete are Absolom Chiturumane, Ronald Deketeke, Isaac Mhlanga, Nicholas Kurimira and Ngonidzashe Maphosa.
Harare’s Chiturumane will be hoping to defend his title in the heavyweight category after beating Mike Munodawafa of Beitbridge in the previous tournament. Kamangira said they are targeting other provinces and their next port of call will be Masvingo and then Bulawayo.
Online Reporter