With the cancellation of the Boxing Office Sports Promotions and Ace Power Promotions’ “Knockout COVID-19” show which was supposed to take place on Sunday 29th November 2020, many are wondering when professional boxing will finally make a return to Ghana.
Well, that is still uncertain but luckily we have a couple of dates that could possibly see the return of the combat sport following a meeting held by the Ghana Boxing Authority (GBA) with the various boxing promoters, coaches and other interested parties.
The meeting which took place at GBA Headquarters at the Trust Sports Emporium on Tuesday 1st December 2020 saw the boxing authority explain the decision behind the cancellation as well as their plans moving forward.
The Pressbox got in contact with GBA General Secretary, Patrick Johnson, who revealed that the cancellation of “Knockout COVID-19” was due to the boxing authority being unable to get the COVID-19 tests needed from the government.
“We are supposed to request for the test of COVID through the National Sports Authority (NSA) to the Ministry [of Youth and Sports], and we wrote the letter to them but as of now we’ve still not heard anything from them and we don’t want to risk our boxers, we don’t want to risk our officials.”
Johnson also revealed the decisions taken at the meeting not going into specifics stating that once the authority was done it will be revealed to the public.
“We have a guideline that we gave to them, we went through, we had to take out certain things because certain protocols and measures that we’ve put down wasn’t easy for them to honour. So we also think that we have to make certain things flexible to enable boxing to roll on.”
“So we cancelled certain measures that we’ve put before them, we also accepted some of their suggestions but next two weeks the executive board will meet again then we finalize the guidelines then we set it across for the public to know the current guidelines we are having to enable us to start boxing.”
This could mean that Ghanaians will be without professional boxing for the next two weeks a timeline which seems to line-up with CEO of Box Office Sports Promotions, Alex Ntiamoah-Boakye, who revealed to The Pressbox that he is looking to bring back his cancelled show in the next two weeks.
“We are looking to set a date which will go not too far beyond two weeks because we have discussed Plan B; if we cannot get the government to support for the COVID test, we have heard there are some places that the fee for the test is lower and we have spoken to the GBA to go in as a corporate organization to negotiate so that we can get it at a cheaper price.”
So what are the possible dates for the return of professional boxing in Ghana and who are the promoters behind them, well GBA General Secretary, Patrick Johnson, revealed this in an exclusive interview with KBOXtv saying
“On the 16th [of December] is Fight Ready Promotions, on the 20th [of December] is Winbase Promotions, on the 23rd [of December] Fight Ready Promotions on the 26th [of December] in collaboration with Box Office Promotions and Cabic Promotions.”
