FORMER Fiji boxing official and boxing trainer Lepani Wilson is concerned with high number of losses (knockouts) from our boxers when they fight overseas.
Wilson, who trained some of Fiji’s boxing champions such as Frank Atu and Tevita Vakalalabure before he trained his nephew Raynald Quilan to winning the International Boxing Organisation super middleweight title in 2016, said he was disappointed with continuous beating our boxers get when they fight overseas.
On Monday night Fiji’s heavyweight champion James Singh’s fight with Herman Eni Purcell for World Youth heavyweight title was stopped in the first round after he couldn’t continue.
“This is very bad publicity for our boxers because almost all our boxers are beaten when they fight in Australia,” Wilson said.
“A good example is Fiji’s heavyweight champion Singh. He has eight fights under his belt yet he has three fights overseas and he lost all, two by knockouts and the third one this week he retired in round one.
“Something is not right because this is not a good record for these boxers in Australia and New Zealand,” Wilson said.
Fiji Boxing Commission chairman Subhash Appana said since the new board was selected in 2019, they had done thorough check on all boxers selected to fight in overseas programs.
“Boxers are selected based on their performance both here and overseas,” Appana said.
” We also do a thorough check on their proposed opponents. Very few of our boxers have been mismatched since this board took over in September 2019,” he said.
Appana also said they made sure that all boxers they allowed to fight overseas had been matched evenly with their opponents.
“None of our boxers have been matched with an opponent with an overwhelmingly superior record under my stewardship,” Appana said.
“If we put the bar at 10 fights and above, very few of our boxers will qualify as we didn’t have too many programs in the past.
“Since we took over, there have been four programs in seven months,” he said. Appana was also asked as to the reason two overseas fighters were allowed to appear in main fight of a local program last Saturday.
“That overseas main bout was “pushed” by the promoter,” the FBC chairman said.
“We did raise objections, but then we thought it’d be good to have the boxing public actually see what level we need to move up to.”
