Mr. Shi Wah Yan – People usually learn boxing for interest and physical fitness in Hong Kong

Mr. Yan Shi Wah

Mr. Shi Wah Yan is the President of the Hong Kong Boxing Association who replied the questions of the management of the Asian Boxing Confederation. He introduced Hong Kong’s current Olympic boxing life, their future projects and the main difficulties in the small but busy country.
Hong Kong is a special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China since 1997 and they can attend in the boxing competitions as an independent country. Hong Kong Boxing Association has got national and international competitions also in the city and they are trying to join back to the Asian level as well.

– Could you please introduce your country’s boxing life?
– In Hong Kong people usually learn boxing for interest and physical fitness therefore it is generally a leisure activity in my country. In the high performance part of the combat sport we achieved one bronze medal in the 2003 Asian Women’s Boxing Championships in Hisar, India and sent boxers to the 2013 ASBC Asian Confederation Youth Boxing Championships to Subic Bay.
We have got several national events for all age groups every year and we are holding fight nights to our boxers. We established the Hong Kong City Cup in 2015 which is an international boxing event for the region’s talents and in the 3rd and last edition our boxers achieved two gold medals this January.

– Would you like to tell us your strategic plans for the future and the key developments in your country?
– We are planning to promote boxing to people of different age groups and hopefully our combat sport will be more popular in Hong Kong. We are targeting mainly the youth of Hong Kong to start practicing boxing in our gyms. We are planning also to send our national level coaches to the AIBA World Boxing Academy to raise their skills and experiences and hopefully several them will be 1-AIBA stars in the upcoming year.

– What are the main strengths and issues in your boxing life?
– We hope there will be more supports for the talented athletes to conduct a long-term and systematic training which would be delivering better results in the tournaments after the improvement of our boxers. Hong Kong has got small area with relatively high population but boxing is not enough popular yet in the city.