Zika set Championships date

The championships, which were supposed to be held last month, are slated for December 17 at Girls High School and will run concurrently with the Unity Cup.
Participants will battle it out in nine weight divisions – lightweight, light welterweight, flyweight, bantam weight, featherweight, super welterweight, middleweight, super middle weight and light heavyweight.

Zika president, Tony Kamangira, said they were forced to jointly host the two events as they wanted to give room to the international friendly match between Zimbabwe’s Bernard Roben and Jarkko Jussila from Finland held early last month in Beitbridge.
“We are going to have the two events on the same day. The national championships were supposed to be held last month but, unfortunately, on the 5th of November we had an inter-continental cup match and we had to move the event to this month.

“This will also help us reduce the costs of hosting two events separately because they are going to run on the same day,” said Kamangira.
Kamangira said they were expecting 10 fighters from each province since there will be two events.
“Some provinces have already started preparing for the competition and the response has been good.

“So far Matabeleland South, Manicaland and part of Harare are registering their fighters.
“The Unity Cup usually focuses on clubs and provinces and individuals who want to get into kickboxing, it’s a flexible event.
“The purpose of the event is to bring all the fighters together and unifying all the provinces while we use the national championships to identify the champions for each weight category.

“This will make it easy for us next year when we select the teams that will represent the country in various international competitions because we know the good fighters we have,” Kamangira said.
The Zika president said they were looking forward to a tough competition.

“The real competition will be for those that will compete in the national championships, they have to be fit because it will determine the 2011 champions in the different weight categories.
“The participants will take part in several fights while for the Unity Cup they will only have a single fight as they contribute points to their clubs or provinces,” Kamangira said.