Tian­na Guy, this coun­try's bronze medal win­ner at the 26th Acrop­o­lis Cup in Athens, Greece in June, was crowned na­tion­al cham­pi­on in the women's feath­er­weight di­vi­sion af­ter de­feat­ing Shawnelle Hamid in the ti­tle fight of this year's Na­tion­al Box­ing Cham­pi­onships.

Fight­ing at the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Sports Are­na in Pleas­antville, San Fer­nan­do, Guy cruised to the fi­nal af­ter an open­ing cam­paign vic­to­ry over Bettyann Williams on Fri­day. And on Sun­day's fi­nal day, the Gold­en Fist Box­ing Gym fight­er made sure of the ti­tle by clob­ber­ing her coun­ter­part.

Guy, who re­cent­ly fought at the Gold­en Belt Se­ries in Mex­i­co and earned a bronze medal, was lift­ed to 12th on the world box­ing rank­ings, her high­est rank to date. Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the hard-work­ing fight­er on Tues­day, Guy said both the na­tion­al cham­pi­onships and her el­e­va­tion in the world rank­ing are an in­di­ca­tion of the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of her club.  

"First­ly, Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships was a suc­cess, not on­ly for my­self but for the Gold­en Fist Box­ing Gym. I think we were able to show­case a lot of the tal­ent, tac­tics and tech­niques that we were work­ing on, and in my case, in par­tic­u­lar, I was able to as­sist some of the fe­male box­ers with their first bout and for them to get ex­pe­ri­ence in the ring, so that was a suc­cess.

"With re­gards to my per­for­mance go­ing for­ward next year, I feel that I have made a lot of progress with re­gards to the tech­niques and tac­tics, I am just ex­cit­ed to see it all come to­geth­er lead­ing in­to 2023, which we all know is an Olympic qual­i­fi­ca­tion year, so I am just ex­cit­ed to see how every­thing is com­ing to­geth­er and see how every­thing will un­fold for me."

She not­ed fur­ther: "It is the high­est rank, I have had to date. It just speaks about the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion my team has put in­to me and my pro­gres­sion, how­ev­er, the goal is to im­prove the rank­ing of course."

Guy's ti­tle-win­ning bout was the first to be de­cid­ed on the fi­nal night, af­ter which Shawn Joseph of the Undis­put­ed Box­ing Gym got the bet­ter of Justin Par­ris for the boys' feath­er­weight ti­tle.

Guy faces a busy 2023, a year that will jump-start her qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the Olympics with an ear­ly-Jan­u­ary prepa­ra­tion camp in Los An­ge­les. She al­so has an­oth­er train­ing camp in Puer­to Ri­co in mid-Jan­u­ary, be­fore she wings off to an­oth­er Gold­en Belt Se­ries there, as well as oth­er tour­na­ments in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in March and the Women's World Cham­pi­onships in mid-March.  

Mean­while, Prince Charles, a sil­ver medal win­ner at the Caribbean School­boys' and Girls' Cham­pi­onship held in Guyana re­cent­ly, had to set­tle for the sil­ver medal af­ter go­ing down to the Ner­aj Ma­hadeosingh in the fly­weight di­vi­sion.

Ma­hadeosingh con­sid­ered one of the new boys on the block, dis­posed of Makieve Bellille in a semi­fi­nal bout which en­sured him a berth in­to the fi­nal. And de­spite fac­ing an op­po­nent of sim­i­lar po­ten­tial, Ma­hadeosingh pre­vailed to lift the na­tion­al crown for the first time in his life.

Paul Matthew Newal­lo, the son of for­mer Di­rec­tor of Sports in the Min­istry of Sports Paul Newal­lo, al­so missed out on cham­pi­onships sta­tus when he was beat­en by Ja­di­ah Blake of the Bow Box­ing Gym on Sun­day for the light wel­ter­weight ti­tle.

Newal­lo, a sil­ver medal­list at the re­cent School­boys and girls' re­gion­al tour­na­ment, was ex­pect­ed to clinch the ti­tle by virtue of his ex­cep­tion­al per­for­mance, which con­firmed his in­ter­na­tion­al de­but for T&T. How­ev­er, Blake pulled out a ma­jor up­set to claim the win and the re­sult­ing sil­ver­ware.

Mean­while, Alex Khan, rep­re­sent­ing South­ern War­riors, got the bet­ter of Joshua Lewis of the Bio­mel Box­ing Gym for the su­per mid­dleweight di­vi­sion ti­tle. 

RE­SULTS:

Tian­na Guy def Shawnelle Hamid for Feath­er­weight ti­tle

Shawn Joseph def Justin Par­ris for 54-57kg ti­tle

Nick Lewis def Amiyr Ali for the 70-75kg ti­tle

Ner­aj Ma­hadeosingh def Prince Charles for the 54-57kg ti­tle

Ja­di­ah Blake def Paul Matthew Newal­lo for the 63-66kg ti­tle

Alex Khan def Joshua Lewis for the 75-80kg ti­tle

Mikel Med­ica def Jaden Boatswain for the 60-63kg ti­tle

Tris­ton King def Nikosi Thomas for the 92kg ti­tle