The box­ing fra­ter­ni­ty will say farewell to long-serv­ing box­ing coach An­tho­ny Wa­ter­man on Sat­ur­day from 1 pm at Bel­groves Fu­ner­al Home, Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do.

Wa­ter­man died on Car­ni­val Mon­day at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, af­ter ail­ing for a while. T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ce­cil Forde said a wake for all box­ers, coach­es, and oth­er stake­hold­ers will be held at the Cos­mic Box­ing Gym on St. James Street, Ba­too Av­enue, Mara­bel­la, on Fri­day night from 7 pm.

Forde said, Wa­ter­man was an in­flu­en­tial part of the sport’s de­vel­op­ment for many years, dat­ing back to the year 2000. Dur­ing his stint as na­tion­al coach, he (Wa­ter­man) would have played a key role in the de­vel­op­ment of box­ers such as An­drew Fer­min, Kert­son Man­swell, Michael Alexan­der, Chimi­er Tay­lor, Wendy Allen, Ria Ram­nar­ine, and Tian­na Guy, among many oth­ers.

Wa­ter­man gained most of his box­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions un­der the Cuban box­ing pro­gramme, which was in­tro­duced to T&T by Cuban Vin­cente Mar­tinez. Mar­tinez made his en­try in­to am­a­teur box­ing in T&T via a bi­lat­er­al pro­gramme be­tween T&T and Cu­ba through the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs.

Via a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment to en­hance the de­vel­op­ment of am­a­teur box­ing in T&T, led to the in­take of Mar­tinez who was giv­en the po­si­tion of Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of am­a­teur box­ing be­tween 2000 and 2010. Forde said Mar­tinez was re­spon­si­ble for im­ple­ment­ing a prop­er and com­pre­hen­sive pro­gramme for am­a­teur box­ing.

“Mar­tinez brought many box­ing cours­es to the coun­try, and many coach­es, in­clud­ing Wa­ter­man, at­tend­ed. Wa­ter­man al­so went to Cu­ba with at least three na­tion­al teams at live-in camps,” Forde ex­plained.

Due to the work done by the ras­ta hair style coach, Forde, and Reynold Cox, an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the TT­BA, as­sured that Wa­ter­man will be sad­ly missed.