BOXING BABES
FENLEY: - South African women have been punching each other’s lights out since the 1980s for fun. But they were always barred from boxing professionally. Now, that has all changed. Recently parliament legalized professional female boxing. As a result, the sport is now mushrooming in townships and remote villages around the country. But not everybody likes the idea.
UPS: - VOICER - A common sight in South African boxing rings. But this is no ordinary ring-girl. Amanda Nguta has a dream to one day become South Africa’s first female professional boxer. But she’s battling tremendous odds. Traditionalists say a women’s role is in the home caring for our future. The idea of girls slugging it out for money appalls them.
PRE-TITLE: BOXING BABES
UPS: - VOICER - It’s an ordinary afternoon in the village of Lwamondo near Thohoyandou in Limpopo. Like many black women around the country, Maria Sivhaga knows her traditional role: that of caregiver. Maria’s gender and class count against her. Her nurturing and giving hands have over the years taken care of her family. Now she uses them to defy what her culture says she should be.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I want to be a champion. I’d like to be a champion like Philip Ndou. I want to see myself exactly where Philip Ndou is.
UPS: - VOICER - Philip “The Time Bomb” Ndou, was born and bred in Thohoyandou like Maria. He’s a former South African and world boxing champion undefeated. Too dangerous for his own good, the unstoppable Ndou was forced into instant retirement for medical reasons. Maria is a high school learner, a breastfeeding mother, a long distance athlete and an amateur boxer. She’s prepared to battle against the odds until glory is hers.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I am at school in the morning, in the afternoon it is training. I only spend time with my child at night.
UPS: - VOICER - Maria is from a deep rural village and values her culture. But that doesn’t seem to cloud her vision: she knows exactly what she wants.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I’ll leave any man who does not understand my love for boxing. Between boxing and a man I’d choose boxing. Good things will come from boxing. A man can dump me. I’ve got to have something to fall back on.
UPS: - VOICER - That sounds like heavy woman’s liberation stuff. Does it mean that Maria spends too much time with feminists?
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I was the first girl to train in this gym. I feel good about being with the only woman among men.
UPS: - VOICER – Five hundred kilometers away in Johannesburg Amanda Nguta takes a much-deserved break from a hectic and hard life. She’s from eMonti or East London in the Eastern Cape and has hardly any relatives in the big city. Amanda should be meeting her friend more often. But she cannot. She just too busy. Currently, Amanda is unemployed. Her idea of a full-time job though is still regarded as unpalatable in many quarters. But day in and day out, there’s one thing that Amanda is doing: she’s smashing traditional stereotypes.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - I like fighting a lot. It’s in my blood, serious. I dream, I eat and sleep boxing. I dream, I eat, I sleep boxing and now I want to work for boxing. I like that thing getting in the ring prove yourself that you are the best.
UPS: - VOICER - Amanda appears nice and sweet the way a well-brought up black girl should be. But behind that girlish smile, lies a vicious fighter.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - It is a competition between females and males. That guys I can do better because at the gym I spar with guys. I know that I won’t even spend three minutes wit them.
UPS: - VOICER - Female boxing is not new women have been boxing since the 1980s and three years ago professional boxing was legalised. But there are still no professional woman boxers in South Africa. For these ambitious fighters, it’s seems to be taking forever.
UPS: - MBALI ZANSI; B0XING PROMOTER - It’s not taking forever the problem is that we do not have enough female boxers. In boxing we have divisions you would have your fly-weight you would have your bantam weight you would have your junior fly.
UPS: - VOICER - At the moment these women fall under Sanabo, the body responsible for the development of amateur boxers.
UPS: - BARRIES BARNARD; PRESIDENT SANABO - Women boxing only started two three years ago in South Africa. We haven’t got that amount of women boxers to stage a national championships for that matter. Regulations state that at least six provinces must enter boxers into the division before we can the national championships. We are going to look at them but before you run you must crawl. Not even all the provinces got boxer’s lady boxers because there are a lot of things that are involved with that.
UPS: - NICK DURANDT; BOXING TRAINER - I don’t think Sanabo has been pushing it very hard but I really can’t comment on the amateur side and hats off to boxing South Africa who is a professional controlling body of boxing in this country they are trying now very desperately to get us off the ground the likes of Lewis and Christian Nadioo with this latest things the baby champs ladies are fighting on this tournaments.
AD BREAK 1
UPS: - VOICER - Boxing SA controls the professional game. They’re trying to put a smile on the scared faces of women boxers. But they’re cautious.
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - Getting women to box is a really sensitive thing and even in this stage there are people who are still shunning at it. And when it even comes to sponsorship there are sponsorships that want to sponsor boxing but when it comes to women bashing each others head they so no this not for us.
UPS: - MBALI ZANSI; BOXING PROMOTER - The attitudes is always like we don’t want to see females fighting. You know boxing is contact sport this is hard core this is serious it is not like you are wrestling kinda there is no manga-manga business here the real deal so men don’t want to see females fighting blood flying all over from their females.
UPS: - VOICER - A female boxer’s place is still not in the centre of the boxing ring.
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - When women have to fight all the time they got to check we have to have pregnancy test. With men four round and with women it became three rounds of two minutes per round. All that is being made as a measure because the general feeling I am not sure whether to say scientific or historical is that women are the weaker sex.
UPS: - VOICER – Maria and Amanda are gearing up for a tournament in Johannesburg in two days time. As amateurs, they don’t know who they’ll be fighting. They’ll only find out at the weigh-in session. Two of Maria’s sisters will also be boxing their parents are anxious.
UPS: - JEREMIAH SIVHAGA; MARIA’S FATHER - In our old Venda culture, girls were not allowed to box. Now, with the Mandela democracy it is fifty/fifty. There are no men and no women. We are all the same.
UPS: - MARGARET SIVHAGA; MARIA’S MOTHER - I’m happy that my kids are boxing. I’ve accepted that there’s winning and losing. I keep on hoping that one day God will be with them, that they will win.
UPS: - VOICER - But Maria’s father still has some regrets…
UPS: - JEREMIAH SIVHAGA; MARIA’S FATHER – She’s got some boxing kit but it’s not enough. I would have liked Maria to have all her own stuff. But I’m a pensioner, I can’t afford to buy her what she needs.
UPS: - VOICER - With her parents’ blessings the ball is now in Maria’s court or shall we say the gloves are on Maria’s hands. But something is wrong with this picture Maria is a woman her sparring partner is not.
UPS: - NTHUMENI MATUMBA; BOXING TRAINER – Once a woman enter this gym, she is treated the same as the men. We cannot tell the men not to punch hard simply because they are fighting a woman.
UPS: - VOICER - Amanda is one of the luckiest girls in the country. Not only does she love her sport and the contests but she trains at one of South Africa’s top boxing gyms. Nick Durandt is a licensed professional trainer. Over the past eighteen years he’s produced many South African and world champions. “Champions Only” is Durandt’s famous trademark. But an amateur woman boxer in his stable is unusual.
UPS: - NICK DURANDT; BOXING TRAINER - The only reason I accepted to train Amanda was because she has the talent. And also there is certain other elements in her make up that made me take her. She is very dedicated to it. She really wants to do it. And she has the love for it she has the passion for it she wants to go somewhere with it.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - My relationship with Nick, we get along very well. He is like a father to me.
UPS: - VOICER - Other aspirant female boxers might want to try their luck with the multiple award- winning Durandt.
UPS: - NICK DURANDT; BOXING TRAINER - I’m not taking on ballerinas this is the real world of boxing and you know there is no difference in my gym between the woman and a man. When I work with Amanda my eyes are closed I do not see a woman I see a boxer that is how it is got to be because this is the tough sport. In order for a woman to accept the sport they got to understand and be treated like a man because they are going to be fighting like a man.
UPS: - VOICER - The road that the two girls are on has been traveled before. The boxing legend Dingaan “The Rose of Soweto” Thobela knows what it takes to get to the top.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP - Well Dingaan Thobela started getting interested in boxing when I was seventeen. And I went through the amateur which I had around eighty three amateur fights and you know I did very well I only lost three out of that.
UPS: - VOICER - The Rose of Soweto made it look all too easy the way he used to bob and weave in the ring.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – A boxing is like any other business because boxing you’ve got to go through certain procedures you’ve got to train. You got to wake up in the morning early in the morning to go and run. Running it helps you to condition yourself to be ready for any engagement in the tournament. So you got to run there is no better lesson than running it is a very hard road to go through it is not easy. You go through pain you go through hardworking at the gym it does not start at the tournament itself where you jump in the ring. You only see the guys in the ring and they start fighting but through the preparations you have to spar with about four five guys and being alone that means you are going to be beaten up. You are getting beaten up in sparring and there is no soft touch and shadow boxing punches lands you got to go through that. You go about fifty rounds before you go to the twelfth round.
UPS: - VOICER - It’s the weigh-in session in Midrand Johannesburg. Because Maria and Amanda have made the same weight they’re to take each other on. It will be a grudge match. The two girls met two months ago in Limpopo. Amanda was severely punished, for the first time in her boxing career. Today she wants revenge. It’s going to be fireworks. Sparks will fly. A good mother’s daughter is going to be beaten up. Maria is fighting without a groin or breast protector. She’s not wearing an ordinary bra either.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - I feel so excited because my ex-trainer are here my ex-manger Mzi Mnguni everybody form Eastern Cape who knows me is here so I had to fought.
UPS: - MZI MNGUNI; BOXING TRAINER – The first round I believe it went to Maria but I think what Amanda did when she realised that she is becoming behind she demanded a win and Maria was very cautious and Amanda was more demanding a win in such that both the last two rounds that is two and three to me they went to Amanda.
UPS: - ANTON GILLMORE; BOXING TRAINER – The girl that was worth won that fight. The first two rounds she won out right you know it was close but she won the rounds. In the last round the girl in the other corner came out very strong but it was not enough to win the fight.
UPS: - VOICER - It’s a split decision. And even the experts are divided. Were the judges looking for boxing skill? Or did they judge according to who landed punches in the right places?
UPS: - EPHRAIM SIMBA; MARIA’S TRAINERS – This is the second fight so they first said on Limpopo that Amanda is being robbed. Now we came here the same story happened now. So how on earth everybody have seen that fight nhe there is no way she has lost that fight. The decision that has been taken it is not fair. But the problem is all the judges are from Western Cape and Amanda is from that very same place form Cape Town isn’t it. It is just that now she is wit Nick Durandt so he came here with Nick Durandt they are trying to please Nick Durandt to say Amanda has won that fight.
AD BREAK 2
UPS: - VOICER - Some say girls can give each other a good fight. But not everyone likes the idea.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – Personally, my opinion on women boxing I give it a big no women’s body is not meant to be hit in the real true sense. It soft just imagine now seeing the ladies hitting each other because that force of landing the punch it is hard I won’t encourage that.
UPS: - EDWARD TSHITETE; LOCAL BUSINESSMAN – I am forty five years old. I know girls are not as strong as men. Girls were created to be mothers. They hold the future. What will it be like if there are only men left in this world because of money?
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – I don’t think it must take off the ground women out there they might think otherwise about what I say. But I am taking in the best interest of women that boxing is not good for women.
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - I don’t if I’m right scientifically but still have at the back of mind that there are certain weights only men can pull and women cannot pull. There are certain pains that men can take and women cannot take. There are certain efforts that need durability that women are not strong enough to endure that men can.
UPS: - NTUMENI MATUMBA; BOXING TRAINER – No matter how much a woman trains, her body will never match man’s.
UPS: - VOICER - Leila Ali is the unbeaten world female champion daughter of the Mohammed Ali. But even she’s isn’t taken seriously here.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – Internationally you’ve got Mohammed Ali’s daughter we’ve got Fraser fine they did compete but you only hear once of them in the bloom moon that they are fighting out there. It is not like a male boxer fighting although probably we can still say maybe it is growing to that level because even if you see them fighting you can tell it is not true boxing you know.
UPS: - VOICER - But women boxers refuse to give up.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - In Venda culture women were not allowed to box. But boxing is like any other job, like nursing.
UPS: - MBALI ZANSI; B0XING PROMOTER - To start with, boxing is a sport it is entertainment sport it is suppose to be entertaining but unfortunately I think it is the way it has been branded I think it is the attitude of the people because they view boxing as violent as barbaric and as aggressive. Yes it is but then that is what you like that is what you want to do.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - It’s a sport sister, it’s a sport
UPS: - VOICER - Culture is still used as a bar against women fighters. So will professional female boxing ever take off here?
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - We were talking about five years but having looked in the last twelve months the games we have made in our boxing we are no longer saying five years. We are saying give us three years.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - They said they’ll give us a chance in twenty twelve to participate in the Olympics in China so I think that is when they are going to say we know, now they are real boxer’s not female boxers because I think now they are saying they just female boxers not real boxers.
UPS: - VOICER - The wait continues. In the meantime, girls have to do what girls must do.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - my dream was to become a nurse. But I’ve realised that school won’t take me far. I’m not so good at school.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - We get nothing out boxing it is for the love of the game but we are hoping that one day we could get something.
FENLEY: - South African women have been punching each other’s lights out since the 1980s for fun. But they were always barred from boxing professionally. Now, that has all changed. Recently parliament legalized professional female boxing. As a result, the sport is now mushrooming in townships and remote villages around the country. But not everybody likes the idea.
UPS: - VOICER - A common sight in South African boxing rings. But this is no ordinary ring-girl. Amanda Nguta has a dream to one day become South Africa’s first female professional boxer. But she’s battling tremendous odds. Traditionalists say a women’s role is in the home caring for our future. The idea of girls slugging it out for money appalls them.
PRE-TITLE: BOXING BABES
UPS: - VOICER - It’s an ordinary afternoon in the village of Lwamondo near Thohoyandou in Limpopo. Like many black women around the country, Maria Sivhaga knows her traditional role: that of caregiver. Maria’s gender and class count against her. Her nurturing and giving hands have over the years taken care of her family. Now she uses them to defy what her culture says she should be.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I want to be a champion. I’d like to be a champion like Philip Ndou. I want to see myself exactly where Philip Ndou is.
UPS: - VOICER - Philip “The Time Bomb” Ndou, was born and bred in Thohoyandou like Maria. He’s a former South African and world boxing champion undefeated. Too dangerous for his own good, the unstoppable Ndou was forced into instant retirement for medical reasons. Maria is a high school learner, a breastfeeding mother, a long distance athlete and an amateur boxer. She’s prepared to battle against the odds until glory is hers.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I am at school in the morning, in the afternoon it is training. I only spend time with my child at night.
UPS: - VOICER - Maria is from a deep rural village and values her culture. But that doesn’t seem to cloud her vision: she knows exactly what she wants.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I’ll leave any man who does not understand my love for boxing. Between boxing and a man I’d choose boxing. Good things will come from boxing. A man can dump me. I’ve got to have something to fall back on.
UPS: - VOICER - That sounds like heavy woman’s liberation stuff. Does it mean that Maria spends too much time with feminists?
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - I was the first girl to train in this gym. I feel good about being with the only woman among men.
UPS: - VOICER – Five hundred kilometers away in Johannesburg Amanda Nguta takes a much-deserved break from a hectic and hard life. She’s from eMonti or East London in the Eastern Cape and has hardly any relatives in the big city. Amanda should be meeting her friend more often. But she cannot. She just too busy. Currently, Amanda is unemployed. Her idea of a full-time job though is still regarded as unpalatable in many quarters. But day in and day out, there’s one thing that Amanda is doing: she’s smashing traditional stereotypes.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - I like fighting a lot. It’s in my blood, serious. I dream, I eat and sleep boxing. I dream, I eat, I sleep boxing and now I want to work for boxing. I like that thing getting in the ring prove yourself that you are the best.
UPS: - VOICER - Amanda appears nice and sweet the way a well-brought up black girl should be. But behind that girlish smile, lies a vicious fighter.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - It is a competition between females and males. That guys I can do better because at the gym I spar with guys. I know that I won’t even spend three minutes wit them.
UPS: - VOICER - Female boxing is not new women have been boxing since the 1980s and three years ago professional boxing was legalised. But there are still no professional woman boxers in South Africa. For these ambitious fighters, it’s seems to be taking forever.
UPS: - MBALI ZANSI; B0XING PROMOTER - It’s not taking forever the problem is that we do not have enough female boxers. In boxing we have divisions you would have your fly-weight you would have your bantam weight you would have your junior fly.
UPS: - VOICER - At the moment these women fall under Sanabo, the body responsible for the development of amateur boxers.
UPS: - BARRIES BARNARD; PRESIDENT SANABO - Women boxing only started two three years ago in South Africa. We haven’t got that amount of women boxers to stage a national championships for that matter. Regulations state that at least six provinces must enter boxers into the division before we can the national championships. We are going to look at them but before you run you must crawl. Not even all the provinces got boxer’s lady boxers because there are a lot of things that are involved with that.
UPS: - NICK DURANDT; BOXING TRAINER - I don’t think Sanabo has been pushing it very hard but I really can’t comment on the amateur side and hats off to boxing South Africa who is a professional controlling body of boxing in this country they are trying now very desperately to get us off the ground the likes of Lewis and Christian Nadioo with this latest things the baby champs ladies are fighting on this tournaments.
AD BREAK 1
UPS: - VOICER - Boxing SA controls the professional game. They’re trying to put a smile on the scared faces of women boxers. But they’re cautious.
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - Getting women to box is a really sensitive thing and even in this stage there are people who are still shunning at it. And when it even comes to sponsorship there are sponsorships that want to sponsor boxing but when it comes to women bashing each others head they so no this not for us.
UPS: - MBALI ZANSI; BOXING PROMOTER - The attitudes is always like we don’t want to see females fighting. You know boxing is contact sport this is hard core this is serious it is not like you are wrestling kinda there is no manga-manga business here the real deal so men don’t want to see females fighting blood flying all over from their females.
UPS: - VOICER - A female boxer’s place is still not in the centre of the boxing ring.
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - When women have to fight all the time they got to check we have to have pregnancy test. With men four round and with women it became three rounds of two minutes per round. All that is being made as a measure because the general feeling I am not sure whether to say scientific or historical is that women are the weaker sex.
UPS: - VOICER – Maria and Amanda are gearing up for a tournament in Johannesburg in two days time. As amateurs, they don’t know who they’ll be fighting. They’ll only find out at the weigh-in session. Two of Maria’s sisters will also be boxing their parents are anxious.
UPS: - JEREMIAH SIVHAGA; MARIA’S FATHER - In our old Venda culture, girls were not allowed to box. Now, with the Mandela democracy it is fifty/fifty. There are no men and no women. We are all the same.
UPS: - MARGARET SIVHAGA; MARIA’S MOTHER - I’m happy that my kids are boxing. I’ve accepted that there’s winning and losing. I keep on hoping that one day God will be with them, that they will win.
UPS: - VOICER - But Maria’s father still has some regrets…
UPS: - JEREMIAH SIVHAGA; MARIA’S FATHER – She’s got some boxing kit but it’s not enough. I would have liked Maria to have all her own stuff. But I’m a pensioner, I can’t afford to buy her what she needs.
UPS: - VOICER - With her parents’ blessings the ball is now in Maria’s court or shall we say the gloves are on Maria’s hands. But something is wrong with this picture Maria is a woman her sparring partner is not.
UPS: - NTHUMENI MATUMBA; BOXING TRAINER – Once a woman enter this gym, she is treated the same as the men. We cannot tell the men not to punch hard simply because they are fighting a woman.
UPS: - VOICER - Amanda is one of the luckiest girls in the country. Not only does she love her sport and the contests but she trains at one of South Africa’s top boxing gyms. Nick Durandt is a licensed professional trainer. Over the past eighteen years he’s produced many South African and world champions. “Champions Only” is Durandt’s famous trademark. But an amateur woman boxer in his stable is unusual.
UPS: - NICK DURANDT; BOXING TRAINER - The only reason I accepted to train Amanda was because she has the talent. And also there is certain other elements in her make up that made me take her. She is very dedicated to it. She really wants to do it. And she has the love for it she has the passion for it she wants to go somewhere with it.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - My relationship with Nick, we get along very well. He is like a father to me.
UPS: - VOICER - Other aspirant female boxers might want to try their luck with the multiple award- winning Durandt.
UPS: - NICK DURANDT; BOXING TRAINER - I’m not taking on ballerinas this is the real world of boxing and you know there is no difference in my gym between the woman and a man. When I work with Amanda my eyes are closed I do not see a woman I see a boxer that is how it is got to be because this is the tough sport. In order for a woman to accept the sport they got to understand and be treated like a man because they are going to be fighting like a man.
UPS: - VOICER - The road that the two girls are on has been traveled before. The boxing legend Dingaan “The Rose of Soweto” Thobela knows what it takes to get to the top.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP - Well Dingaan Thobela started getting interested in boxing when I was seventeen. And I went through the amateur which I had around eighty three amateur fights and you know I did very well I only lost three out of that.
UPS: - VOICER - The Rose of Soweto made it look all too easy the way he used to bob and weave in the ring.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – A boxing is like any other business because boxing you’ve got to go through certain procedures you’ve got to train. You got to wake up in the morning early in the morning to go and run. Running it helps you to condition yourself to be ready for any engagement in the tournament. So you got to run there is no better lesson than running it is a very hard road to go through it is not easy. You go through pain you go through hardworking at the gym it does not start at the tournament itself where you jump in the ring. You only see the guys in the ring and they start fighting but through the preparations you have to spar with about four five guys and being alone that means you are going to be beaten up. You are getting beaten up in sparring and there is no soft touch and shadow boxing punches lands you got to go through that. You go about fifty rounds before you go to the twelfth round.
UPS: - VOICER - It’s the weigh-in session in Midrand Johannesburg. Because Maria and Amanda have made the same weight they’re to take each other on. It will be a grudge match. The two girls met two months ago in Limpopo. Amanda was severely punished, for the first time in her boxing career. Today she wants revenge. It’s going to be fireworks. Sparks will fly. A good mother’s daughter is going to be beaten up. Maria is fighting without a groin or breast protector. She’s not wearing an ordinary bra either.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - I feel so excited because my ex-trainer are here my ex-manger Mzi Mnguni everybody form Eastern Cape who knows me is here so I had to fought.
UPS: - MZI MNGUNI; BOXING TRAINER – The first round I believe it went to Maria but I think what Amanda did when she realised that she is becoming behind she demanded a win and Maria was very cautious and Amanda was more demanding a win in such that both the last two rounds that is two and three to me they went to Amanda.
UPS: - ANTON GILLMORE; BOXING TRAINER – The girl that was worth won that fight. The first two rounds she won out right you know it was close but she won the rounds. In the last round the girl in the other corner came out very strong but it was not enough to win the fight.
UPS: - VOICER - It’s a split decision. And even the experts are divided. Were the judges looking for boxing skill? Or did they judge according to who landed punches in the right places?
UPS: - EPHRAIM SIMBA; MARIA’S TRAINERS – This is the second fight so they first said on Limpopo that Amanda is being robbed. Now we came here the same story happened now. So how on earth everybody have seen that fight nhe there is no way she has lost that fight. The decision that has been taken it is not fair. But the problem is all the judges are from Western Cape and Amanda is from that very same place form Cape Town isn’t it. It is just that now she is wit Nick Durandt so he came here with Nick Durandt they are trying to please Nick Durandt to say Amanda has won that fight.
AD BREAK 2
UPS: - VOICER - Some say girls can give each other a good fight. But not everyone likes the idea.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – Personally, my opinion on women boxing I give it a big no women’s body is not meant to be hit in the real true sense. It soft just imagine now seeing the ladies hitting each other because that force of landing the punch it is hard I won’t encourage that.
UPS: - EDWARD TSHITETE; LOCAL BUSINESSMAN – I am forty five years old. I know girls are not as strong as men. Girls were created to be mothers. They hold the future. What will it be like if there are only men left in this world because of money?
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – I don’t think it must take off the ground women out there they might think otherwise about what I say. But I am taking in the best interest of women that boxing is not good for women.
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - I don’t if I’m right scientifically but still have at the back of mind that there are certain weights only men can pull and women cannot pull. There are certain pains that men can take and women cannot take. There are certain efforts that need durability that women are not strong enough to endure that men can.
UPS: - NTUMENI MATUMBA; BOXING TRAINER – No matter how much a woman trains, her body will never match man’s.
UPS: - VOICER - Leila Ali is the unbeaten world female champion daughter of the Mohammed Ali. But even she’s isn’t taken seriously here.
UPS: - DINGAAN THOBELA; FORMER BOXING CHAMP – Internationally you’ve got Mohammed Ali’s daughter we’ve got Fraser fine they did compete but you only hear once of them in the bloom moon that they are fighting out there. It is not like a male boxer fighting although probably we can still say maybe it is growing to that level because even if you see them fighting you can tell it is not true boxing you know.
UPS: - VOICER - But women boxers refuse to give up.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - In Venda culture women were not allowed to box. But boxing is like any other job, like nursing.
UPS: - MBALI ZANSI; B0XING PROMOTER - To start with, boxing is a sport it is entertainment sport it is suppose to be entertaining but unfortunately I think it is the way it has been branded I think it is the attitude of the people because they view boxing as violent as barbaric and as aggressive. Yes it is but then that is what you like that is what you want to do.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - It’s a sport sister, it’s a sport
UPS: - VOICER - Culture is still used as a bar against women fighters. So will professional female boxing ever take off here?
UPS: - LOYISO MTYA; BOXING SA - We were talking about five years but having looked in the last twelve months the games we have made in our boxing we are no longer saying five years. We are saying give us three years.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - They said they’ll give us a chance in twenty twelve to participate in the Olympics in China so I think that is when they are going to say we know, now they are real boxer’s not female boxers because I think now they are saying they just female boxers not real boxers.
UPS: - VOICER - The wait continues. In the meantime, girls have to do what girls must do.
UPS: - MARIA SIVHAGA - my dream was to become a nurse. But I’ve realised that school won’t take me far. I’m not so good at school.
UPS: - AMANDA NGUTA - We get nothing out boxing it is for the love of the game but we are hoping that one day we could get something.