Professional boxers might feature in Rio

that there are proposals being undertaken to see possibilities of professional boxers’ eligibility to compete at the Rio Olympic Games.

Mashaga yesterday said that AIBA president Wu Ching Kuo highlighted this on Wednesday during the meeting of commissioners of the international body in Manchester, United Kingdom.

He said the AIBA President informed the commissioners that the last remaining barriers preventing full-time professionals from competing at the Games are set to be abolished within a matter of months.

The BFT official said this year AIBA will be celebrating its 70th birthday; they want to change so that it can be in line with International Olympics (IOC) policy of having best athletes at the Olympic Games.

He said Kuo informed the meeting that despite the qualifying process for Rio already being underway; the intention of AIBA is clearly to change the rules in time to give each individual national federation the opportunity to select whoever they want in time to join the remainder of the procedures.

“I have seen that communication from AIBA, our president informed the commissioners that this year they will be professional boxers as you know it’s only boxing which do not have professional athletes in the Olympics”, he said .

He said locally, plans are underway to form to elect the committee to work on AIBA Professional Boxers (APB) and World Series Boxing (WSB) which will see the formation and implementation of professional boxing in the country.

Mashaga said the plan was to elect members of APB and WSB at the just ended championships in Kawe but it failed due to low turnout of boxing officials, but he said the remaining time before the Brazil Olympic Games is enough to have the committee and also boxers for professional bouts.

“According to AIBA statutes it is absolutely possible to have professional boxers at the Olympic Games, even the president of AIBA has assured at the last Wednesday congress that it will happen this year, here in Tanzania we will select that committee in July so that it starts the job”, he said