The Worldwide Boxing Pageant KO Medication returns to Argentina this week and it’s inevitable to assessment the historical past of this flagship program of the World Boxing Affiliation. Three many years of onerous work, of effort of the boxing household in several nations that, as it’s going to occur as soon as once more in Buenos Aires, come collectively to advertise youth with a transparent message in favour of the game.
Created as an initiative to steer younger folks in direction of a life guided by the wholesome values of sport and away from one of many worst scourges of society, the KO Medication Pageant has grow to be a sports-based social accountability program, which has grow to be a showcase for boxers from so many nations and assist for social initiatives within the cities which have served as its headquarters.
Two of probably the most dazzling figures within the 31-year historical past of the KO Medication had been undoubtedly Gennadi Golovkin and Jorge Linares, who later catapulted to the highest of the world boxing scene. Fighters of the stature of Rosendo Álvarez, Héctor ‘Macho’ Camacho, Kina Malpartida, Luis ‘Nica’ Concepción, Celestino ‘Pelenchin’ Caballero, Ricardo Mayorga, Mayerlin Rivas, Clara Lescurat, Carlos Cañizales and others additionally competed there. Like them, dozens of women and men wrote their very own chapters of success beneath this system.
An incredible man’s concept
It was from the thoughts of Don Gilberto Mendoza that the concept of making a marketing campaign to struggle the scourge of medicine by way of sport was born. Thus was born the KO Medication World Marketing campaign, which in 1991 turned a tangible actuality with the primary KO Medication Marketing campaign Kids’s Sports activities Video games within the state of Aragua, Venezuela the place greater than 200 youngsters and adolescents participated in non-boxing disciplines similar to volleyball, athletics, rubber ball – immediately baseball 5-a-side – and soccer.
A few years later, additionally in Venezuela, within the third version of its video games, skilled boxing was included, celebrating the primary Latin American Boxing Pageant. The KO Medication was born.
From then on, numerous younger boxers discovered a platform to point out their expertise to the world, and the occasion promoted by the WBA was a gathering level for the boxing and sporting household, a giant home that additionally acquired nice boxing personalities similar to Mike Tyson, Roberto ‘Manos de Piedra’ Durán, Felix Tito Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya, and Antonio Cervantes ‘Child Pambele’, Bernard Hopkins, Evander Holyfield, Aaron Pryor, Alexis Arguello, Naseem Hamed, Virgil Hill, Don King and baseball Corridor of Famer Luis Aparicio, amongst many others.
This August 23 and 24, on the On line casino Buenos Aires within the Republic of Argentina, a brand new chapter within the historical past of the KO Medication, the third in a row to be held within the southern nation, will probably be written.