FORMER world champion `Vicious’ Vivian Harris is set to be the first high-profile Caribbean professional boxer to embrace AIBA and has confirmed his readiness to attempt representing Guyana at the Rio Olympics. The former World Boxing Association (WBA) junior welterweight champion has hailed AIBA’s latest move to include professional athletes as a step in the right direction and has promised to make urgent contact with Guyana Boxing Association president Steve Ninvalle, concerning his chances of making Rio.
“I think it’s great (what AIBA has done). We now have more options as professional boxers. AIBA is giving us the opportunity to do what many professional fighters were longing for,” Harris said from the USA yesterday.
“My intention is to fight for my country in the Olympics. I have won a world title for Guyana and winning an Olympic medal would be the icing on the cake of my career,” Harris declared.
AIBA amended its constitution at an Extra Ordinary Congress last Wednesday in Switzerland, to pave the way for boxing’s “oil and water” to mix at the upcoming and other Olympic games. The move has been criticised by professional governing bodies, but AIBA president Dr Ching- Kuo Wu said that the best boxers should compete at the Games and added that it is his belief that every athlete should have the right to compete at the Olympic Games.
When contacted yesterday, GBA president Steve Ninvalle, who is overseas applauded Harris’s decision, labelling it “career-defining.”
“I look forward to having [an] early discussion with Vivian as he is not the only Guyanese professional fighter to have signalled willingness to step on the side of AIBA, Ninvalle said. “There is a new era in boxing and several are ready to climb aboard.”
The GBA boss also opined that the recent AIBA amendment puts more options in the hands of boxers. “It’s up to the boxer. Many believe that professionals would come in and dominate, but I beg to differ. The sport is being revolutionised by AIBA and in time, many will see the wisdom in and accept the change.”
In order to qualify for Rio, the 37-year-old Harris will have to travel to Venezuela next month for the final qualifier, where 26 places would be made available. Based in the USA, Harris won the WBA junior welterweight title in 2002 after stopping Cuban-American Diosbelys Hurtado in the second round.
He was then24 years old and remains the youngest Guyanese to have won a world title.