Kota Kinabalu: Sabah boxing made history when six former Sukma boxers were roped in by the Malaysian Amateur Boxing Association (Maba) to attend centralised training at the Bukit Jalil School of Sports in preparation for the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games in 2006.President of the Sabah Amateur Boxing Association (Saba), Orlando Harumal, said Friday that this is the first time that so many boxers from the State are given such honour by the national boxing body.
“I’m really grateful to Maba for their confidence in our boxers and I’m sure our boys will not let them down,” he said.
The boxers, Raymond Rahim (light flyweight), Shamsudin Harun (flyweight), Eddy Kalai (bantamweight), Fernandez Paulus (featherweight), Alexander Liwat (light welterweight) and Mackenzie John (welterweight), left for Kuala Lumpur on Friday.
Orlando said the boxers will commence training under the National Sports Council (NSC) programme as soon as they settld down at their new training centre.
“The association has achieved its objectives with the inclusion of six of our boxers into the national boxing squad.
“All this was made possible with full support from the Culture, Youth and Sports Ministry and the Sabah Sports Board (SSB) who have been instrumental in the development and welfare of boxing in general in Sabah,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said Saba would be organising a boxing tournament from Jan 28-30 in Tuaran. Boxers wanting to participate can contact Ismail Ibrahim at 019-8019825 or Mohd Salleh at 088-771222.
He said the tournament is open to various categories and age groups.
On another programme, Orlando said Saba will be conducting trial selections for boxers to represent Sabah in the Sukma 2004 in Negeri Sembilan.
He said the trial selection would be conducted during the Borneo Cup to be held either next month or March.
“Our next target also includes the Arafura Games in Darwin, Australia in May,” he added.
