Kenya’s Gabriel Ochieng and Consolata Musanga will step up on the ring to contest for international title belts against Tanzanians in The Awakening Boxing’ tournament set for tomorrow at Impala Club, Nairobi.
Ochieng will fight Ramadhan Kumbele for the vacant Universal Boxing Organization (UBO) International bantamweight title belt While Musanga will come face-to-face with Rehema Abdallah in the UBO International female lightweight weight contest.
The two bouts are among 10 professional fights on the card tomorrow. The tournament brings together 20 boxers with Tanzania contributing five, Uganda (four), Congo and India one apiece with hosts Kenya fielding nine.
Of the 10 bouts, there are only two women’s fights where Kenya’s Florence Muthoni will entertain Tanzanian Amina Muhammed in middleweight category, in addition to the title belt between Musanga and Abdallah.
“We have had a good and enough training regime and we are now ready to roar. We hope this is not the first and last tournament of its kind to be held in the region. We need several fights against different boxers so that we can learn from the various challenges and also grow,” said Musanga.
Congolese boxer Fiston Botumbe meets Musa Ntege (Uganda) in the light Heavyweight, George Onyango (Kenya) invites Ugandan Abdalla Luwanje in the super middle as home-boy Emmanuel Chivoli comes face-to-face with Jay Jay Ngotiko of Tanzania in the welterweight.
Other bouts will see Daniel Wanyonyi and Jacob Maganga of Tanzania battle out for the super middle honours. In the cruiser weight, Kenya’s Aziz Kolombo squares it out with Uganda’s Charles Kakande while Patrick Owino faces Wilber Suuna (Uganda) in light welter. Another Kenyan George Owano takes on Indian Pardeep Kharera for super welter bragging rights. All the 20 boxers landed in the country yesterday morning.
The 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games silver medalist Christine Ongare has been locked out of this event since she is an amateur boxer. She said lack of enough bouts has for a long time plagued the growth of Kenyan (and East Africa at large) boxing and this is a step in the right direction.
