Hyping the no-hopers to attract some interest

Friday will mark 35 years since I attended my first boxing tournament.

It was at the Good Hope Centre in Cape Town, and the main attraction was Kallie Knoetze against Canadian Mike Koranicki.

Studying the programme between fights I noticed that all the boxers were given long write-ups, except for one - poor Patrick "Kid Splash" Kholi.

All that appeared next to his name was something like: "Patrick is an up-and-coming boxer" from some peninsula township I don't recall.

But Kholi the promising pugilist got stopped in the third round.

I was confused as to how such a skilled person could be beaten so easily, until years later, I realised that programmes were paid for by promoters who, by and large, would hype up a peanut if they thought it would sell tickets.

I subsequently discovered that the so-called up-and-coming Kholi had been boxing for nearly a decade by that point, and had been stopped in his previous bout, for a provincial title, 37 days earlier.

He had failed in two previous bids for provincial belts in Western Cape, and perhaps the highlight of his career was claiming a hometown draw against veteran Happy Boy Mgxaji in a non-title bout in 1982.

The main bout, at least, didn't disappoint. Knoetze was ahead on points going into the 10th and final round, but the well-conditioned Koranicki jumped on him and hammered him into submission.

That earned Koranicki a crack at South Africa's other great heavyweight prospect of the age, Gerrie Coetzee, who was looking to get back to his winning ways after losing on points to Big John Tate for the vacant WBA heavyweight crown at Loftus Versfeld.

Tate had also beaten Knoetze by stoppage, so Koranicki was supposed to be a good test for Coetzee.

He wasn't. Coetzee blew him away in the first round.

Coetzee went on to make two more challenges for that WBA belt, before finally being triumphant against Michael Dokes, while Koranicki stuck it out in South Africa, beating Jimmy Abbott on points in 1980 and knocking out Kallie's brother, Bennie, in two rounds in 1982.

To this day boxing aficionados describe that period as the golden era of SA boxing, and many bemoan the sport's drop in class since then.

It's a bit like West Indian cricket, which once had a mythical air for kids like myself who grew up in the thick of apartheid.

This all-black team was the greatest cricket side in the world and they were a kick in the teeth for proponents of racial superiority.

Obviously, we never got to see them in action, except for snippets of grainy footage on TV news - until the two rebel tours from 1982 to 1984.

The SA team, which had easily beaten rebel teams from England and Sri Lanka, suddenly had a fight on their hands.

The hosts won the ODI series and drew the Tests in the first tour, but they were beaten in both formats in the second tour a year later.

The frightening thing was that the West Indians who came to South Africa were mostly discards - that is how much talent they used to have.

That's not the case any more, and I fear that the Proteas-Windies series that starts today is hardly going to be competitive, short of a Christmas miracle.

There is no promoter, alive or dead, who could hype this current Caribbean crew into contenders.