Gr­ge­o­ry Tru­jil­lo

Jizelle Sa­landy was like­ly to make as much as US $1 mil­lion (TT$6.29m) in the box­ing ring in 2009. The box­er's pro­mot­er Buxo Potts re­vealed this yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence at Ali­cia Palace on La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road, Queen's Park East, Port of Spain.

Potts said that plans were afoot for Sa­landy to fight six times dur­ing the year, in ad­di­tion to her mak­ing a tele­vi­sion ap­pear­ance. She was ex­pect­ed to de­fend her eight world ti­tles against top Amer­i­can Mary Jo Saun­ders in T&T in mid-2009 (the deal was closed on Sat­ur­day) and have a ti­tle de­fence lat­er in the year in Madi­son Square Gar­den, thus be­com­ing the first fe­male box­er in the world to fight on HBO.

The his­to­ry-mak­ing fight­er shat­tered records, one of which was be­com­ing the youngest ever fight­er to be­come a world cham­pi­on at the age of 14. Lat­er, she went on to be­come the first box­er, male or fe­male, to win eight ti­tles in a sin­gle fight. Sa­landy will re­main the hold­er of the eight belts she won dur­ing her short box­ing ca­reer. "These belts be­long to T&T," said Potts, who added that they (the belts) will be kept in a place like a mu­se­um for pub­lic view­ing. Peo­ple from all around the world have called, or emailed, to of­fer con­do­lences to the box­er's man­age­ment team and fam­i­ly. One such per­son was for­mer xOlympic 100 me­tres sprint cham­pi­on Ja­maican-born Eng­lish­man Lin­ford Christie, who of­fered to set up a foun­da­tion in Sa­landy's name.

Sa­landy had big plans, among which were to be­come a com­mu­ni­ty work­er and get­ting a home for abused and street chil­dren. Potts said that the last time he was in com­pa­ny with Sa­landy was on Sat­ur­day when she played with his head and kept re­mind­ing him that they had to go to vis­it the old women at the L'Hos­pice on Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street on Mon­day (yes­ter­day). Har­ry Ra­goo­nanan, who struck up a part­ner­ship with Sa­landy two years ago, said that a home in San Fer­nan­do for abused and street chil­dren will be named af­ter Sa­landy. "The Jizelle Sa­landy Home will be on Mar­ry­at Street in San Fer­nan­do and will be run by the Save The Chil­dren Foun­da­tion," stat­ed Ra­goo­nanan.

Ra­goo­nanan is vice-pres­i­dent of the Save The Chil­dren Foun­da­tion, which is head­ed by for­mer San Fer­nan­do May­or Ian Ather­ly, him­self a top na­tion­al cy­clist in his days. Both the wives of Ra­goo­nanan and Ather­ly are al­so heav­i­ly in­volved in the foun­da­tion. Ra­goo­nanan will be pro­mot­ing the first box­ing card for the year on Jan­u­ary 29 when an­oth­er tal­ent­ed fe­male fight­er, Tiana Sosa-Saney will be mak­ing her pro­fes­sion­al de­but.

Sosa-Saney, who is a gold medal­list at the Carif­ta Cham­pi­onships, is high­ly tipped to fol­low in the foot­steps of Sa­landy. Al­so ap­pear­ing on the card will be Sean Corbin, who is on the brink of fight­ing for a WBA or WBC light-heavy­weight ti­tle, top Guyanese Leon Moore and hard-punch­ing Bar­ba­di­an Sean Cox. In the mak­ing are plans have top heavy­weight Ker­ston Man­swell move to­wards a crack for the world heavy­weight cham­pi­onship. "Man­swell could be­come a con­tender for the heavy­weight ti­tle with­in the year, " said Ra­goo­nanan. "He has the tools to be a cham­pi­on."