By SANDRA MWILA –
ORIENTAL Quarries Boxing Promotions (OQBP) manager Christopher Malunga has conceded that South African female boxer, Bukiwe Nonina and David Cacresse of Colombia were not competitive opponents for Catherine Phiri and Charles Manyuchi during last weekend’s World Boxing Council (WBC) title bouts.
Malunga said boxers’ records could sometimes be deceiving and that he was disappointed with the premature end to both fights.
He said in an interview that his stable’s bid to bring top quality boxers to fight his pugilists would remain under threat because it was difficult to judge a boxer before seeing them in the ring.
He said he was still hurting from the weekend fights which ended prematurely after Nonina and Cacresse retired early in their bouts against Catherine and Manyuchi.
Catherine retained her WBC Silver bantamweight title after clobbering Nonina in two rounds while Cacresse refused to return for the third round after he was badly beaten by Manyuchi, who retained his WBC International welterweight belt.
“You know these voluntary fights and we had to pick a boxer whom we forwarded to the World Boxing Council for endorsement while if it was a mandatory fight, then the WBC would have picked a boxer to fight Catherine or Manyuchi,” he said.
He said his stable was confident that the boxers picked, based on their good records, were going to give both Catherine and Manyuchi good fights but was equally disappointed with the turn of events.
“As you know, we are trying to lobby from the WBC to give our boxers a shot at proper fights but we cannot control the boxers feeling on a particular day. A boxer might have a good record but just fails to fight on a particular day and that is what might have happened to Nonina and David or maybe they just found our boxers too strong,” he said.
Malunga said his stable will endeavour to provide tough opposition to the boxers in a bid to prepare them for future title fights.