28 Jun 2017

National boxing team has brought home two medals at the just ended African Boxing Championships held in Congo Brazaville.

The boxers faced a stiff competition from African boxers who fought tooth and nail to book themselves a space at the World Boxing Championships to be held in Hamburg Germany in August.

Mahomed Otukile managed to bag silver medal in the light weight finals (52kg) against Flissi Mohamed of Algeria.

The Algerian settled for gold after beating Otukile 3-0.

In his road to the finals, Otuikile beat Nkolomoni Heritage of Ivory Coast in the semis after beating Mauritius’s Rolfo Jean David 3-0 in the quarter finals.

In the preliminaries, Otukile won against South Africa’s Noxele Bongani on technical knockout grounds.

This means that Otukile has automatically qualified for the World Championships in Germany in August.

The second medal was won by Kesemang Aratwa who secured bronze medal on the women’s side in the female elite category (64kg).

The rest of the team members lost all their fights due to the tough competition emanating from their opponents.

Commenting on the competition, national team head coach, Lechedzani Luza said the tournament was competitive and was attended by all African superpowers.

He mentioned that Cameroon was dominant on both men and women winning most of the bouts up to the finals.

He further added that countries like Congo, DR Congo, Uganda, Cape Verde, Madagascar who are usually not that good, were this time around on fire.

All in all Luza said although his team was doing fine since they have the necessary aggression and endurance, however, they need to be more economic and approach the bouts with more tactic.

Again, he mentioned that they need to work more on their punching power.

Tough as it was, Luza’s winning strategy was working behind the jab, putting the opponents under immense pressure so as to distract their plans, a strategy that worked for some of his boys particularly Otukile who went all the way to the finals.

Going forward, Luza’s next plans are to play Zambia and Namibia perhaps in the near future and probably have an international camp before the World Championships in August.

“Otherwise the team is promising and we have learnt a lot in the entire competitions,” he said.

The team is expected to arrive back home on Wednesday the 28.

The next competitions will be staged at Hamburg Germany where the city is expected to host about 280 elite male boxers in the new Olympic cycle to Tokyo 2020. ENDS