14 Nov 2016

Prisons are this year’s Botswana Boxing Association (BoBA) national champions.

The club’s youthful boxers were crowned national champions after a 14 points lead closely followed by Lobatse-based Mafika boxing club, Eastern Military Garrison on nine points and closing the top four brackets were UB and BMC boxing clubs on six points apiece.

To put the icing on the cake, Prisons’ hard hitting welter weight pugilist, Mmusi Tswiige and the exciting light welter boxer, Atang Mosenke, received gold medals for their efforts in the finals.

In what turned out to be the best bout of the tournament, Mosenke produced a polished performance against the visiting Kabo Seitshiro from Selebi Phikwe.

The two boxers had the impressive crowd in attendance at the state-of-the-art University of Botswana Student Centre eating from the palm of their hands as early as the first 30 seconds of the first round.

Tswiige set a date with yet another Phikwe based fighter in Gofaone Rabokhokho.

He marched to the finals after an explosive semifinal victory against last year’s welter weight champion Lentswe Zwinila.

Rabokhokho succumbed to Tswiige’s flying hooks towards the end of the last round and was disqualified for unsportman behaviour after punching Tswiige outside regulated timing.

The much anticipated middle weight match between Zibani Chikanda and Keoagile Rantutu failed to produce the anticipated spark.

Rantutu tried too hard to inch past the on form Chikanda but threw several jabs to a bitter end as the Selebi Phikwe based boxer was finally crowned champion.

In the bantam weight, Opelo Modungwa, who has been impressive from the preliminaries beat visiting Mompati Kabanjera from Maun.

Kefentse Molalapata, who had shocked former national team sensation Kabelo Bagwasi continued his good run against Onkarabile Mothibedi in the light weight.

Another interesting match was between women boxers, Katlego Olatotse and Keneilwe Rakhudu of DTCB.

Rakhudu emerged victorious at the end of the bout while in the 48kg division enterprising women boxer, Beauty Phori of UB beat Cynthia Thantsha of GBVC. BOPA