The Guyana Boxing Association (GBA) will kick start its international events for 2019 with the Patrick Forde Memorial Tournament.
According to President of the association, Steve Ninvalle the event is scheduled to be held on February 17 at the National Gymnasium starting from 19:00hrs.
During the inaugural fixture, Guyana hosted St Lucia and Suriname.
This year, Ninvalle disclosed that “Trinidad, St Lucia and Suriname are billed to compete so far.” The card is scheduled to have in excess of 15 fights.
Ninvalle further stated that he expects to have all the pivotal divisions on the card namely the middleweight, lightweight, bantamweight, junior welterweight and light heavyweight classes.
He reasoned that “Those are the divisions that we did exceptionally well in at the Caribbean Championships, so we will be pushing for our guys in those divisions to get some much needed competition leading up to Pan Am.”
The Patrick Forde Memorial Tournament which is a collaborative effort involving the GBA and Alford McDonald was birthed following the success of the Mike Parris U-16, the Andrew Lewis National Novices, the Lennox Blackmore National Intermediate and the Terrence Ali National Open.
Ninvalle added:“We are also looking at honouring Winfield Braithwaite.”
Braithwaite won a gold medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada, in the light-welterweight division.
