Ex-champs disagree on impact of new boxing arena

President John Dramani Mahama and major sports and political figures, converged at the all-new Bukom Boxing Arena to commission the new facility. This was a political and a sports event rolled into the same package.

The arena had its fair share of friends and sympathizers of the National Democratic Congress for whom this was further evidence of the government’s ability to scale up infrastructural development in Ghana – the numbers present were enormous.

The 7,000-seater arena is situated in Bukom, traditionally considered the spiritual home of boxing. Some of the biggest names in the sport were on hand to grace the occasion. Joseph Agbeko, Alfred Kotey, Ike Quartey and the first boxing world champion in Ghana D.K Poison were all in attendance.

President Mahama who commissioned the facility on Tuesday hopes the arena will play a major role in producing more boxers. “As part of our(government) commitment to youth and sports development, we are opening this multipurpose sports facility,” said H.E. John Dramani Mahama, who continued, “we are confident it will help unearth and train sporting talent in Ghana, not only in boxing but in other sports as well.”

But practically, how will this help in the production of more world class boxers? Another boxing great in the country, Ike Quartey thinks it won’t do much. “Arena can not boost boxing. You have to start from juvenile. We have to get the boxers to come and fight in the arena.

We don’t have the boxers but we have arena”, the former boxing world champion said. But another former world champion Joseph Agbeko disagrees. “It (the sports complex) is going to help Ghana boxing a lot. There’s going to be active promotion.

This will make it easy for the promoters to promote and will make boxers very active.” said Agbeko. “This is very good for Ghana boxing.” he added. What is not in doubt is that boxing infrastructure in Ghana just got a major upgrade.