By Monwabisi Jimlongo
East London boxing trainer Mzamo ‘Chief’ Njekanye and his boxer Azinga ‘Golden Boy’ Fuzile are hard at work preparing for the former South African featherweight champion’s fight against Martin Ward from the United Kingdom.
Fuzile and Ward meet in an International Boxing Federation (IBF) junior-lightweight elimination bout in Las Vegas, United States, on 29 May.
“This is the time. We are happy and grateful that the date of the fight against Martin Ward has been announced. We knew we were going to face him thus we have been working very hard in the gym,” Njekanye said.
“This is the most intense training we have ever had. We know that this is going to be a tough and a very important fight for Azinga. We will go to America to fight because we believe it’s going to be war. Martin Ward knows wherever he is that this is going to be a tough fight for him as well.”
This fight is on the undercard of American boxer Devin Haney’s defence of his World Boxing Council (WBC) junior-lightweight belt against former WBC and World Boxing Association (WBA) lightweight champion Jorge Linares from Venezuela.
The winner of the Fuzile-Ward fight is going to clash against whoever wins between Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov from Tajikistan and Japanese boxer Kenichi Ogawa.
Rakhimov and Ogawa clash in a vacant IBF junior-lightweight title contest in July. The title became vacant after American boxer Joseph Diaz lost it on the scales before his drawn fight against Rakhimov in February.
