Berman frustrated at Boxing Hall of Fame’s snub of Mnguni 07 October 2024 – 20:06
by BONGANI MAGASELA – Courtesy Business Day
Boxing promoter Rodney Berman is frustrated that his appeals to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in New York to honour late ace trainer and manager Mzimasi Mnguni have fallen on deaf ears.
Berman, 79, is widely regarded as SA’s top promoter. The pugilist maestro and qualified attorney has been in the game since 1977 and has promoted more than 2,000 fights. His Golden Gloves company produced its first world champion under Mnguni’s tutelage.
Welcome “Hawk” Ncita captured the International Boxing Federation (IBF) junior featherweight belt from defending champion Fabrice Benichou in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1990.
Mnguni produced fighters at his Eyethu Gym in Mdantsane, near East London, and Berman promoted them.
Other IBF champions the two produced include Mbulelo “Slayer” Botile (bantamweight and featherweight), Vuyani “The Beast” Bungu (junior featherweight) and Zolani “Toger” Petelo (mini flyweight).
Mnguni also guided former Olympian “Hawk” Makepula to winning the WBO junior-flyweight title. Ring Magazine, the bible of boxing, named Bungu’s win the “Upset of the Year” for 1990. Berman and Mnguni’s working relationship lasted for three decades. However, due to Mnguni’s poor health as a result of several strokes, he could no longer train fighters. He died in 2021 at the age of 73.
The IBF is one of the four most respected sanctioning boxing bodies in the world. The others are the World Boxing Association, World Boxing Council and World Boxing Organisation.
“It is more than five years since I wrote to them and pleaded that they induct Mzi,” said Berman, who is yet to be inducted to the International Boxing Hall of Fame after being nominated some time ago. “I honestly don’t know what more to do. Mzi deserves to be inducted to the International Hall of Fame for what he did for this country.
“Mzi was a genius in boxing. I don’t think his achievements were ever really recognised.”
Berman said that he had not been inducted yet after his nomination was not something he thought about.
“Whether I eventually get in is neither here nor there to me. I will be satisfied to see Mzi and Vuyani inducted,” said Berman, who in 2018 wrote a petition to Ed Brophy, who heads the famous institution, making the point that Bungu was most deserving, especially as he was democratic SA’s first world champion.
Bungu won the IBF belt in 1994, defeating revered American Kennedy McKinney, the 1988 Summer Olympics champion who ended the reign of Ncita in 1992.
Bungu took on all-comers and defended his belt 13 times before relinquishing it in 2000.
What made his achievements more remarkable is that they were forged in spartan circumstances, Bungu fighting out of a basic gym in Mdantsane and living in a tiny house.
Bungu was nominated for the hall of fame, but the boxer who retired in 2005 did not make the cut in the voting stages, which took place in December 2020.
