Boxing back to medal winning ways

Semi-final Friday

Mike Sekabembe (UGA) v Joseph Joyce (ENG)
Efe Ajagba (NGR) v Joseph Goodall (AUS)

Uganda is assured at least of another medal after Mike Sekabembe made it to the semi-finals of the Commonwealth Games boxing competition at the SECC Hall on Tuesday evening.

Sekabembe beat Ghana’s Haruna Osumanu with an unanimous point decision in the Super Heavy weight (+91kg) after a hard fight, which might have ended in the third round in his favour hadn’t the referee been lenient.

The experienced boxer, who has more than 10-years of amateur boxing experience including not giving up on the sport during the over 8-year state of turmoil, rose tall to prove that boxing can also earn medals for the country.

Different factions were battling to lead the sports body, resulting into being suspended from the international body and a number of road maps that were stopped by intrigue.

Sekabembe piled up this win having beaten Barbados’s Anderson Emmanuel to in the preliminaries earlier.

“It is good that boxing is again winning medals after the turmoil we have been through. We are proud of them,” Uganda Olympic Committee president William Blick could not hide his excitement.

“We need to even train harder but this needs more money both from government and the corporates.”

Sekabembe, a UPDF soldier, has all his focus on seeing that he downs England's Joseph Joyce for him to advance to the final, his first ever in an international competition.

Joyce proved to be a hard fighter against Scotland’s Henderson Ross, who he stopped four seconds to the end of the third round on technical ground.

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