Sports Perspective: So we foolishly believe in our boxing board
It is frustrating that despite numerous efforts by promoters to develop professional boxing in the country, there are certain elements that are still opposed to light and progress– -they behave like a clock that stopped ticking a few years ago.
While boxing is making strides all over the world, here in Malawi it is dwindling every day because of a self-styled and counter-productive organisation which thinks is better placed to run the affairs of professional boxing.
This is an organisation that is rotten to the core, allergic to criticisms, disjointed, confused and an embarrassment to this nation; which is already grappling with numerous problems like hunger, diseases and poverty.
Malawi Professional Boxing Control Board (MPBCB) delinked itself from Malawi Boxing Association (Maba), and registered itself as a Professional Boxing Control Board Limited Company at the registrar’s office.
But this body, which is devoid of knowledge on how to run such a national sporting discipline, changed its name and started using the protected name, Malawi and emblems, on its boxing belts.
By law, the word Malawi is protected and it is criminal to use it without the clearance of the State. It carries a sentence of two years imprisonment.
Malawi National Council of Sports administration manager, Henry Mereka, confirmed that this wayward son of ours, masquerading as MPBCB, is not registered with the Sports Council and that they have no control over it. No wonder, there has been a lot of dirt emanating from MPBCB.
Professional boxers are being ill-treated, promoters are frustrated, boxing standards have drastically gone down, and there is utter arrogance permeating into the heads of our administrators, but it would appear nobody wants to stop this mess.
It was risky for government to entrust the responsibility of promoting the welfare of professional boxers into the hands of a few individuals who lost direction and, in as far as boxing administration is concerned, their brains crash-landed sometime back.
It is an organisation that fails to perform a simple task of updating records of their boxers, and they have no time to read the laws that govern the sport.
The concerns raised by stakeholders that the country cannot have the same body controlling and sanctioning professional fights must be seriously looked into. This arrangement is awkward and it is total madness.
Seriously, Malawi after 51 years of Independence, cannot have a professional boxing governing body which has no secretariat, no website and its physical address was registered somewhere in the remote district of Mchinji, my home district which is about 435 kilometres away from Central Business District of Blantyre.
With such a lop-sided thinking at the helm of professional boxing, we foolishly believe that one day we shall produce world-class boxers. It’s a shame!
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