T&T’s elite box­ers Or­te­ga Jokhu and Don­nell Phillip emerged vic­to­ri­ous on Sat­ur­day’s Back-to-School card at Jer­ry Junc­tion, Wa­ter­loo, two fights they thought were in­ter­na­tion­al wins, but their suc­cess­es were wa­tered down to ex­hi­bi­tion bouts.

Jokhu and Phillip were sched­uled to fight the fea­ture bouts against Venezuela’s Guiller­mo Salazar and Jorge Luis Oliv­eros Lopez, re­spec­tive­ly, but both were re­quired to go up in weight di­vi­sions, which the Box­ing Board did not ac­cept. Wen­dell Jokhu, the or­gan­is­er of the card said the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol (TTB­BC) al­lowed the fight to go on but la­belled it as ex­hi­bi­tion fights.

The ju­nior Jokhu, who fights be­tween 48-51kg was asked to step up in weight to face his op­po­nent at 54-57kg, while Phillip at 63kg had to face a 75kg Lopez. Both though were not af­fect­ed by the weight dif­fer­ence as they won their re­spec­tive fights. Jokhu earned a split-de­ci­sion win over Salazar and Phillip tri­umphed on a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion in his en­counter.

There were al­so wins for Ish­mael Hy­po­lite, the Bio­mel Box­ing Gym fight­er who pre­vailed over Dar­nell Sinaswe of the Prodi­gy Box­ing Gym by a split de­ci­sion in the 63kg bout.

Pro­mot­er and coach Wen­dell Jokhu said de­spite the changes, the card was a good one which has now gained the at­ten­tion of po­ten­tial spon­sors. Three days ago, the se­nior Jokhu told Guardian Me­dia Sports that his cards are aimed at sav­ing the lives of many young box­ers who were in a life of crime, as well as for de­vel­op­ment pur­pos­es.

Mean­while, Joshua Lewis, who rep­re­sent­ed the Cos­mic Box­ing Gym in Mara­bel­la earned a split de­ci­sion tri­umph over Jaden Castel­lano of Bio­mel. Lewis was ini­tial­ly card­ed to take on Josi­ah Daly of the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC), how­ev­er, a no-show by Daly forced or­gan­is­ers to re­place him with Castel­lano in an 80kg bat­tle.

Al­so on the night, young Kadeem Chan­dler (Faith Box­ing Gym) was ad­judged the best school­boy fight­er on the night, fol­low­ing his split de­ci­sion, a three-round win over Mi­tra Bhawanie (Gold­en Fist Box­ing Gym). Ed­win Her­nan­dez was al­so a win­ner on the night, he pre­vailed over Stephion Ali (Prodi­gy Box­ing Gym) in the youth 17-18 years 50kg con­test by a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion.

There were al­so wins for Shawn Ram­dath (Gold­en Fist) over Mikel Chan­dler (Faith BG) 27-30kg by a split de­ci­sion; Jonathan Ramdeen ( Faith BG) 42-44kg over Luis Manuel Her­nan­dez (Undis­put­ed BG), and Shi­va Toolsie who de­feat­ed Mikol Figueroa (YTC) 57-60kg by split de­ci­sion.