Morocco kept alive their hopes of retaining the overall title by entering 18 boxers in the finals of the AFBC African Men’s and Women’s Boxing Championships to take place on 25 and 26 October at the Stade des Martyrs in Kinshasa. DR Congo team is breathing down the neck of the Moroccans with 14 boxers in the finals followed by Kenya and Cameroon with three boxers each, Namibia, Senegal and Republic of Congo two each while Zambia, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa and Burundi have one each in the final.

For the landlocked Burundi, placing their second ever boxer, light middleweight Nestor Nduwarugira,  in the finals of the African Championships is another milestone. Nduwarugira knocked out Congo’s Ngamissengue Makavissa in the first round with a powerful right punch to the chin that sent him sprawling to the canvas.

‘I noticed his left hand was always low leaving the face open, so I timed myself and released a right cross that knocked him out,’ said Nduwarugira, the second Burundi boxer who made it to the final of the African Championships after Ornella Havyarimana at the 2022 edition in Maputo, Mozambique.

Nduwarugira will face Kenya’s Boniface Mogunde in the final. The Kenyan has been in sparkling form employing a new fighting approach almost like one of Cuban top boxers. Mogunde first saw off DR Congo’s Anderson Manzongo in the quarterfinals and then in the semi-finals he outpointed Morocco’s hard-hitting Abidine Amroug who survived a second-round knockdown after Mogunde’s right punch exploded on his jaw.

Besides Mogunde, the other two Kenyans in the finals are warhorse Elizabeth Andiego and newcomer Clinton Macharia in the super-heavyweight division. Both face Moroccans in the finals with experienced Andiego meeting newcomer Hassna Larti and Macharia fighting against Younes Bouhdid. Kenya last won African Championships gold back in 2017 in Congo Brazzaville with lightweight Nick Okoth’s success.

On paper, Morocco team is favoured to retain the overall title they won last year in Yaounde, Cameroon. All their three gold medallists, Khadija Mardi, Yasmine Mouttaki and Widad Bertal, as well as silver medallist Rabab Cheddar are in the finals with Cheddar hoping to improve on her Yaounde performance by winning a gold medal in the flyweight final against homegirl Nyembo Gisele. The latter also aiming to improve on her Yaounde silver. Mardi meets Cameroon’s Bernadette Keuye, Mouttaki squares it out with DR Congo’s Carine Nkelani and the showboating Bertal is favoured to overcome DR Congo’s Merveille Bisambu to maintain her superiority as Africa’s top female bantamweight with the African Games title under her belt.

Morocco suffered a slight setback when their African bantamweight champion Imad Azoui was beaten by Namibian southpaw Tryagain Ndevelo in a hot-tempered featherweight semi-final that saw both boxers exchange fists briefly after the bell to end the third round. The referee had to intervene to separate them. Even in the dressing rooms, they exchanged icy glances as Ndevelo was ready to step in case they decided to go bare knuckles.

‘As I said before this championships started, I want to win gold, and I will do it,’ said Ndevelo who meets Zambia’s African Games silver medallist Mwengo Mwale in the finals.

DR Congo, placed second in last year’s African Championships, will be hard-pressed to win the overall title with the Moroccans displaying more technical superiority. The middleweight bout between DR Congo’s silver medallist in Yaounde, David Tshama and Morocco’s African Games silver medallist Yassine El Ouarz will be one of the highlights of the two-day finals. Tshama lost to Morocco’s Rio Olympics bronze medallist Mohamed Rabii in the finals of the 2023 African Championships and will therefore not be in the mood to lose to another Moroccan especially boxing before his home fans in Kinshasa.