Lack of venues has led to the postponement of this coming Saturday’s tournament, which was going to be promoted by Ayanda Matiti’s Xaba Promotions.
Xaba Promotions announced the postponement of the tournament on its Facebook late on Tuesday evening. This was the second time that the tournament, which was scheduled for the Orient Theatre in East London, got postponed as it was initially pencilled for Saturday, 15 March.
“It is with heavy heart that I announce the postponement of our event, which was scheduled for the 29th of March,” Xaba Promotions said in a statement.
The statement said that Xaba Promotions’ broadcasting partners, SuperSport, took a decision to condemn Orient Theatre as being unsafe.
The venue was flagged by Boxing South Africa (BSA) last December as being unfit to host tournaments as a lot of work was needed to be done to fix it as it had dilapidated.
“Over and above the major announcement that the Minister made during the convention, which is still subjected to internal departmental procurement processes, the City had undertaken to deal with minor interventions and by the end of last weekend the contracted person by Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality had not started work,” the statement further said.
In the statement, Xaba Promotions accused East London venue owners of deliberately increasing prices.
“We are still engaging with venue owners in East London in line with the available broadcasting dates made available by our partner,” the statement said.
The statement further stated that Xaba Promotions is considering moving the tournament to Gqeberha or Gauteng, however mo final decision has been taken.
“Though this development is outside of our making and control, we wish to profusely apologise in advance for any inconvinience this negative development may have caused,” the statement further said.
Meanwhile, the show was going to be headlined by a World Boxing Organisation (WBO) Youth junior-featherweight title fight between Siyabulela Hem from Duncan Village in East London and Ghanaian Enovh Tetteh.
