Welcome to the press kit of Victoria Falls Boxing Academy!

On the following pages you will find relevant information about our academy. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us!

About Victoria Falls Boxing Academy 
Founded in 2010, the Victoria Falls Boxing Academy is the longtime dream of Tobius Owen Muposiwa. Growing up, his life path was transformed when he began boxing training under veteran boxer Titus "TNT" Zhikali and he wanted to use boxing to influence other at-risk youngsters, to provide discipline and structure in their lives. He gathered a group of boxers together who came to be known as the "Bush Boxers", as early morning and evening saw them training in the surrounds of Victoria Falls town and road training on the main route into the town. 

In 2013, Tobius was leading the group out on a run when he noticed a group of disadvantaged youngsters at the town dump, collecting plastic bottletops to earn money, unable to attend school. He told them how dangerous it was to be on the dump, frequented by baboons, hyenas and elephants and invited them to join the group on their run. Then 6 years old, Prince Urengwa took him up on the offer and changed the course of his life. Abandoned with only his grandmother to look after him, the little family tried to eke a living from selling tomatoes and Prince scavenged the dump rather than attend school, with no authority figure to respect. Tobius became that mentor and father figure and by age 10, Prince became a winning Junior boxer. He is currently the Zimbabwe Pinweight Goldmedalist and has defeated everyone in the country up to age 13 in his weightgroup. 

As Prince transformed his life, others took notice and Personal Mpofu joined him. Personal too comes from a disadvantaged background, with a struggling family unable to provide for him. Personal has gone on to become the Zimbabwe Paperweight Gold medalist and both boys are on track for the 2022 Youth Olympics to be held for the first time in Africa. Both boys now reside with Tobius and his wife, as he has assumed guardianship for them and pays their school fees. The kind headmaster of Mosi-oa-Tunya Senior School, seeing the Academy had nowhere to practise, allowed the use of the school classrooms in the evening. This was usually by cellphone light, with no electricity available, and with the whole team, juniors and adults taking turns to use the two pairs of gloves available. 

Tobius never gave up on his dream and inspired by the success of his young boxers, he formed the Victoria Falls Boxing Academy Trust in 2013 along with local business people, to fundraise for a travel costs. Current Trustees are Andrew Lane, Faruk Karim, Obert Sibanda, with Director Tobius Muposiwa. As Prince and Personal continued to shine, Tobius came up against the difficulty of obtaining a passport for Prince. Although he managed to contact his absentee mother, she never came to meet with Tobius to help him with the application. This meant that Prince ran out of boxers to fight after defeating all other local boxers in hs division. Tobius only solution was to look for further funding to obtain a tournament size ring to which he could then invite boxers from outside the country to compete in.

Along with Trustess, he approached the Jafuta Foundation and within weeks, an incredible donor came forward. Not only did Mark Valentine provide a ring, he actually bought an entire gym and donated it, along with his expertise in fitout and decor to create a boxing gym. Along with the wonderful support of Ian Gloss of Liquorama, an operations team came together to bring the gym to life - Management Commitee: Chairperson - Danielle Connolly. Ian Gloss, Faruk Karim, Kent Davies, Laura Taggart. 

The Victoria Falls Boxing Academy gym officially opened it's doors on the 6th December 2019 and the former "Bush Boxers" now have a permanent home base. The Academy currently has 32 members, 10 of them juniors and 2 of them female boxers. The future is bright and Tobius looks to help more disadvantged youth through boxing now that he has better resources to do so and next dreams of opening a High Performance Centre for Boxing in Victoria Falls.

The Victoria Falls Boxing Academy in conjunction with the Zimbabwe Boxing Federation is proud to host the upcoming 5 Nations Boxing Friendly Championship on 21st December 2019 at The Kingdom Hotel in Victoria Falls. Please see the relevant links for further confirmation or feel free to contact us!