Xu, Niu capture 1st league belts
Print Edition
CHINA’S professional boxing tournament League of Fists produced its first two champions as Xu Que and Niu Zhongjie won the final bouts in Shanghai to take the WBO China Champion belts on Sunday.
Xu of Zhejiang Province beat his Guizhou Province opponent Cheng Bingbing in an 8-round 126-pound featherweight fight while local boxer Niu overcame Wen Tao from Zhejiang in their 8-round 140-pound super lightweight bout.
League of Fists, jointly organized by American boxing promoter Top Rank and its Chinese partner SECA, has been gathering professional boxers from around the country to compete in six different weight classes. Winners take home the WBO China Champion belt specially set up by the World Boxing Organization. The country-level title will give the boxers WBO points so that they can propel themselves onto the international stage.
It’s one of the most formal titles in China’s professional boxing given the tournament’s standard organization. However, there is still room for improvement at the competition level.
“The tournament can help form a talent selection and cultivation system, which will benefit China’s professional boxing in the future,” said veteran boxing reporter Zhou Chao of sina.com.
“Objectively, the competition level of the tournament is not yet the best. The four finalists cannot be compared to China’s best boxers in those divisions. It will be hard for them to challenge for WBO intercontinental titles,” Zhou added.
SECA hopes the tournament will attract more talented boxers in future. According to tournament director Lin Fei, they made it a point to arrange the finals of the first two bouts in Shanghai because “China’s professional boxing started in Shanghai. The city has a history for the sport and we hope a new era will begin here”.
The finals were also attended by seven retired boxers in their 80s from Shanghai and Beijing, who are erstwhile national or regional champions or runner-ups.
“I’m excited and happy to see the new generation,” said 84-year-old Li Zhengting, a four-time Shanghai Boxing Championship winner from 1950 to 1953. “I was always an amateur, but boxing brought me much joy. It directed me in both my personal life and career.”
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