Southern Giant bigger than ever

THE Southern Giant annual boxing festival will have all the bells and whistles it always had.

The event will take place on November 9 and will be Anton Gilmore’s last Southern Giant as promoter. He is educating his Fight with Insight (FWI) children next year to be fully comprehensive promoters as they follow a three-month course with him at the Hillbrow branch of the project. He will be mentoring the children, but still be in the background as they learn the skills of promoting.

This year’s event will be a great send off for Anton. Starting the day at noon, children from FWI will entertain with dancing and singing.

At 1pm, the amateur boxing starts and in the heat of all that is going on with foreigners in South Africa, they will be hosting the first-ever All Stars African Southern Giant, which is designed for foreigners based in SA against a select squad of South Africans.

Foreigners in SA can’t fight for a national of provincial title as they are not naturalised. Box Office gymnasium is, therefore, planning six fights in this trial to expose talent like Paul Kamanga, who beat the SA champion at the Southern Giant.

This event is intended to mend social cohesion with foreigners and will highlight talent like Jezdel Kayembe, who knocked out the SA champ in one round, and Joel Libote the Ali-fashioned fighter.

Also at the event will be two prodigy boys from Tyrone In’tveld and trained by Peter Armstrong of Kempton Park. The boys are mentored by their dad to become world champions as Lamenchenko’s father did for him.

The Southern Suburbs Boxing Club has added the Fight with Insight project to the club and the new fighters they have trained this year will also have their day in the ring. The Hillbrow branch will be fighting as well, but also showing off their entrepreneurial skills such as the catering they have been taught over the year by Luke Lamprecht. The children will also show off two and three businesses they built this year under the new entrepreneur school they started.

The event at 5.30pm will be the retired professional boxers showing they can still do it, including Anton Gilmore, who fights a guy who reckons he beat Gilmore as a pro and they will leave it all in the ring. They are planning three other retired pro fights with some big names from yesteryear.

The highlight of the day will showcase talent from various southern gyms, like Wade Groth and Julian Cook from Sugar Ray’s Gym. Willers Baloyi from Manny Fernandes will have a go, and if you ever saw him fight you know he leaves it all on the line when he fights. Shaun McMinnie, who was once trained by Gilmore and fought at the Giant and is now based in Durban, will make the trip to Johannesburg to be on the pro card this year round.

Leyton Gloss, who had a great fight with Ricardo Malajika, might fight against his only other loss, Arnel Lubisi. This will be a humdinger for the event as Gloss always comes to fight.

The Smith brothers (Sean and Peter) will have one of their fighters at the event. This event is unusual as all fights were sponsored by their respective clubs and supporters. An SA title fight (TBA) is also planned for the night.

As always, Gilmore will be making his calendar for 2020 and it’s one-of-a-kind A1 size desk plotter calendar with a 12-month spread having the best photos from photographers like Nick Louwrens, Christo Smit, Alexius van der Westhuizen and Annette van Schalkwyk.

The venue has moved around in the last few years from the suburbs to the Portuguese Hall, but this year it will take place at Turffontien Racecourse. Larry Weinstein from Phumelela offered Gilmore the venue as he wanted Gilmore’s send-off to be an event to behold. The venue has become a venue for regular boxing events.

It’s the new mecca of boxing in the South. The Southern Giant will be a long day for fans from noon till 11pm and will be the first triple event in South Africa with amateur boxing, exhibition/white collar boxing and professional boxing.

To obtain more information contact Anton Gilmore on 083 653 0190.