Embrace professionalism, Rukundo advises coaches

Rukundo (L) trains with national team boxer Kennedy Katende during the Olympic Games in Brazil. PHOTO BY SANDE BASHAIJA

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Boxing. Rukundo, who handled Uganda’s two boxers at the just-concluded Olympic Games, wants fellow coaches to adjust to the new Aiba demands.

KAMPALA. It was a meeting not blessed by a wrangling national federation but Olympic boxing coach Sam Rukundo deemed it a necessity to meet and brief his local counterparts about his Rio experience and the need to adjust to the current demands of Aiba boxing. Rukundo solely funded the meeting.

The lively interaction spread to over four hours inside the Uganda Olympics Committee baordroom, Wednesday as Rukundo, among other things, deciphered Aiba Pro Boxing (APB) and World Series of Boxing (WSB)—Aiba’s answer to professional boxing—which seemed jargon to most of the coaches in attendance, despite Uganda’s Fazil Juma Kaggwa, Willy Kyakonye and Kennedy Katende having reaped some dollars from the arrangement. Rukundo tasked the coaches to position themselves, and embrace change in Aiba boxing. “You are the game,” he said. “And you should know boxing is no longer amateur, as you used to know. It is business nowadays, so brace yourself for the change, be professional.”

2004 Athens Olympics quarterfinalist, Rukundo, the only Aiba Star Three in Uganda, added: “You must train a boxer with intent to push him to the top level, and you must be equipped to earn from your efforts, otherwise, someone else will reap from what you sowed.”

Coaches retorted by challenging Rukundo to play ringleader. “Use your voice and status as Uganda’s most qualified coach; lead the way and engage the sports minister, tell him that boxing is a different ball game and this is what we need to do to do,” Moses Kintu, a national referee/judge, reiterated what he called the main action point. “I’m sure this must be news to the minister himself…” A recording of Kennedy Katende’s loss to Britain’s Joshua Buatsi was not available for review but after reviewing Ronald Serugo’s three rounds against Armenian Narek Abgaryan, Rukundo, the 12 coaches and two judges unanimously agreed the Ugandan lost. All concurred Serugo exhibited competitiveness, threw more punches but lacked power and often missed the target.

“His opponent was technically and tactically superior,” they said. The verdict reverses the first view that the split decision loss was utterly controversial.

It could be the longest engagement local coaches have had with a national trainer returning from international duty but its productivity will depend a great deal on the response of an extremely divided federation. Well aware of the infighting, which has stunted the sport for decades, Rukundo preached unity “in our small boxing family.”