AIBA season to be hosted in Guiyang

The International Boxing Association, or AIBA, announced during a recent news conference that Southwest China's Guiyang of Guizhou province has been chosen to be a permanent host city of the international boxing season, which will fall in June.

AIBA said that 14 star boxers will attend the season this year, including Lu Bin, AIBA Pro Boxing 49kg world champion as well as candidate of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, and Wu Zhonglin, a boxer from Guizhou. Wu will have the chance to fight Lu at the upcoming season.

The boxing season in Guiyang includes four tournaments - AIBA Pro Boxing preliminary, APB finals, APB championship and AIBA Open Boxing China Open tournament.

AIBA is a sport organization that sanctions amateur boxing matches and awards world and subordinate championships and boxers would qualify for the Olympic Games through matches of the team tournament league of AIBA World Series of Boxing and AIBA Pro Boxing.

Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, attempts to build itself into "the capital of boxing" in cooperation with AIBA and some major sports companies, local officials said. And the city is the first in the world to become the permanent international boxing season host city.

The province is the hometown of many famous boxers, such as Zou Shiming, who is China's most successful amateur boxer of all time, winning three amateur world titles at the World Amateur Boxing Championships in 2005, 2007 and 2011.