By Ron Jackson
Boxing in South Africa is at its lowest ebb since the Second World War with fewer tournaments and less active fighters due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
To date, there have only been 20 tournaments in South Africa and 269 active fighters with 213 of those being from South Africa, as advised by Andre de Vries of Boxing SA.
These are alarming statistics with a lot of South African fighters being on the breadline.
However, Rodney Berman of Golden Gloves Promotions whose first venture into professional boxing took place on 29 August 1977 when Charlie Weir knocked out Bushy Bester in the first round at the Wembley Ice Rink in Turfontein, continues to produce quality tournaments.
His next tournament named “Triple Threat” with two South African title fights takes place at Emperors Palace near Kempton Park on Saturday 25 September and will be televised live on Supersport.
In the main event, Simon Dladla (6-1, 5 KOs) defends his South African junior middleweight title against the #3 listed challenger Shervantaight Koopman (7-0, 5 KOs). Both fighters are big punchers, and this could develop into an exciting slugfest.
The second South African title fight on the bill is between #1 rated Frank Rodrigues (7-3, 4 KOs) and Cowin Ray (6-0, 4 KOs), who is listed at #3, for the vacant South African super middleweight title.
On the undercard in a heavyweight bout scheduled for six rounds, Wilhelm Nebe (5-0, 4 KOs) goes in against Josh Pretorius (7-5, 5 KOs), who in his most recent fight lost on points against Tian Fick in a clash for the vacant South African heavyweight title.
In an eight round junior bantamweight bout, Ricardo Malijika (7-1, 5 KOs) hopes to get his career back on track after coming off a loss when he goes in against Khaylethu Mbedie (2-5-1, 1 KO).
Other bouts on the card are:
Junior welterweight-4 rounds
Xolani Selimane vs Nthethelelo Nkosi
Middleweight – 4 rounds,
Thando Mali vs Phikelani Terence Khumalo
Catchweight at 54.5kg
Juan Croukamp vs Jono Grose.
The tournament starts at 3pm.
Keep up the good work SA boxing needs it
Boxing going the same route as the country…to the scrapheap.
Aaron Kabi,Luvuyu Kakaza,Alladin Stevens and Giovanni Pretorius etc those were the boxers in world level,nowadays sad sad low numbers of pro boxers in SA.
The national tv broadcaster stopped showing fights,caused unemployment in the SA boxing family.Boxers became lowest of the low in the sport food chain.
One Eye: Everything nationally run in SA that used to be so good, world class, has all gone so backwards sadly. The national TV broadcaster, SABC TV included.
SA Boxing was even still really good when ‘paid’ TV, MNET which became DStv, showed the boxing (local and international). Slowly but surely the SA Rand vs Dollar, Pound etc. got worse that anything, including boxing, has been degraded like the rest of SA.
South African boxing is at its lowest ever and needs fixing
Thanks to Rodney Berman, Golden Gloves for their effort and good shows they put on.
Unfortunately since the rule of the ANC government the country and economy has been turned to sht.