PNG Kickboxing Association (PNGKBA) has rescheduled to send its national kickboxing team for the world championships from July 2012 to September 2012.
Secretary General of the PNGKBA Mr. Eddie Kavina confirmed this while withdrawing the 20 member athletes from the training camp at Institute of Public Administration (IPA).
Mr Kavina said each individual’s return trip cost K17, 000.00 and the PNGKBA was not in the position to raise enough money to cater for the 35 member team.
President of the PNGKBA Stanley Nandex also confirmed that the changes were made for the interest of the athletes which only five fighters were able to pay for their levy fee of K3, 000.
Mr Nandex said his aim is to produce another world champion with the number of athletes we send and changes we got to win in such event.
He said the next world championships will be in Orlando Florida, USA and this would be reasonable for the athletes to raise their funds. He said PNGKBA is affiliated to three major international bodies in the world. 1) WORLD KICKBOXING ASSOCIATION (WKA), 2) INTERNATIONAL SPORTS KICKBOXING ASSOCIATION (ISKA) and 3) WORLD KICKBOXING FEDERATION (WKF) so when we missed out on the WKF world championships this time in Croatia we are still invited to attend the WKA world championships in the US.
Nandex said the PNGKBA would like to apologize to the athletes and their sponsors for the inconvenience cause and look forward to continue with the work for September event.