ORIENTAL Dumps Esther’s FIGHT “We are out of it (Esther’s title fight). We don’t want to JEOPARDISE other people’s TOURNAMENT”

ORIENTAL Quarries Boxing Promotions has pulled out of the joint promotion with Exodus Stables for Esther Phiri’s WIBA/WIBO super welterweight title fight against Monalisa Sibanda of Zimbabwe.
Phiri’s title bout has been set for January 21 at Mulungushi International Conference Centre in Lusaka.
Oriental decided to pull out of the joint promotion after differing with Exodus on the K600 million budget for the unification fight.
Oriental director of operations Christopher Malunga said his stable was no longer involved in the promotion of the WIBA/WIBO super welterweight unification title fight.
“We are out of it (Esther’s title fight). I don’t want to give the reasons because I do not want to jeopardise other people’s tournament. Call joint promotion spokesperson Ben Saili,” Malunga said.
Zambia Professional Boxing Board of Control (ZPBBC) secretary Ben Saili could, however, neither confirm nor deny that Oriental has pulled out of the joint promotion.
“If there is something like that it is between the two promoters. There has been no communication from Oriental and as far as I am concerned, this does not affect Esther’s fight against Monalisa,”he said.
He said ZPBBC is not involved in the staging of fights but theirs is to sanction the bouts when promoters meet the mandatory requirements.
Oriental and Exodus, the country’s most active stables ,last year agreed to co-promote Esther’s unification title fight against Sibanda that has been postponed twice in the last nine months.
It is also believed that former National Milling Corporation managing director Peter Cottan is also no longer involved in the promotion of the unification fight.
Saili said he is supposed to meet Exodus manager Anthony Mwamba today to find out progress made on the January 21 title fight.
He also emphasised that national heavyweight champion Francis ‘Galagata’ Zulu has been stripped of his belt but has been given first chance to fight Muhammad Ngandu to reclaim the title.
“Francis (Zulu) will not be defending his title against Muhammad because he was stripped of the belt by the board’s ratings committee which sat towards the end of last year,” he said.
The national heavyweight title is the main supporting bout for the WIBA/WIBO super welterweight unification fight.

Posted by Editor on January 3, 2012. Filed under HEADLINES, SPORTS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry