By Ronnie Nathanielsz
China's WBC female world champion Wang Ya Nan who has set her sights on a possible showdown with Laila Ali, defends her world middleweight title at the Malvern Town Hall in Melbourne on Sunday.
The fight is a joint promotion of Australia's "Promoter of the Year" and TV boxing host Peter Maniatis and Michael Yang who is the No.1 promoter in China.
Maniatis told us that “not since the days of Jeff Fenech and Jeff Harding have we had a WBC world title fight in Melbourne.”
The undefeated WBC female boxing champion who now has moved base to Melbourne plans to do a Kostya Tszyu and become a resident and fight out of Australia. She defends her world title against number two contender "Crazy" Charity Mukami of Kenya over 10 rounds.
Wang has said she ould like to challenge undefeated WBC Super middleweight world champion Laila Ali, daughter of the greatest heavyweight champion Muhammed Ali in a super fight next year in Melbourne , if she successfully defends her title against Mukami.
Maniatis said that the 24 year old Wang Ya Nan 24 is a big name in China but not yet well known in Australia. Maniatis said "l think Wang is the future of World Female boxing and can move up in weigh divisions to win more world title's hopefully for Australia, l know she is keen to fight Laila Ali.” Maniatis revealed he had seen Wang's fight on DVD and watched her spar against men in training, adding “l believe she will be a superstar of female boxing in Australia and I consider myself a lucky man to be her promoter."
Wang's trainer- manager Michael Yang has trained 2 world champions in China and believes Wang is the best talented boxer he has trained.
Also featured on the undercard is 21 year old Filipino-Australian Heath Ellis (11-1-1, 6 KO’s) who takes on Aswin Cabuy (11-12-1, 4 KO’s) and Australian super bantamweight champion Mark Quon (8-2, 2 KO’s) against Filipino Flash Villacura, a veteran of 50 pro fights with a record of 23-25-2 with 13 knockouts.
