North Island champ crushing obstacles to shot at games

Whangarei-based boxer Kahukura Bentson has his eye on the prize at next month's New Zealand Golden Gloves Tournament after comfortably dominating the North Island Golden Gloves, to claim the welterweight senior elite division title.
The talented boxer is aiming to qualify for October's Commonwealth Games in the welterweight division and needed to win his division at the NI Golden Gloves to progress to the national competition in July.
Bentson needs to back up his division-winning performance at the NZ Golden Gloves to qualify for the Oceania Boxing Tournament, where he needs to win gold or lose to the gold medallist by no more than three points, to make the Commonwealth Games team to compete in New Delhi.
Although he has already put in hours of work to get where he is, there are still plenty of challenges ahead of Bentson as he strives to qualify for his third crack at the Games.
The 31-year-old fought at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games as a light-middleweight before the division was scrapped, and at the 2006 Games in Melbourne in the middleweight division. So far, Bentson has not put a foot wrong in this year's campaign.
He won several precursor bouts leading up to the NI Golden Gloves in Rotorua last weekend, where he won both his divisional bouts on points.
"My first bout was a semifinal match on Saturday against Luke Campbell of Wanganui. I felt that I won comfortably, out-boxing Luke on the outside, establishing my jab using my reach and speed and landing long, straight punches. The score was 28-14."
In Sunday's final, Bentson fought New Plymouth's Daniel Maxwell, and won 14-7, on points.
"It was quite a boring fight and it was low-impact without as many punches thrown. I felt Maxwell didn't come to fight and was in survival mode, just on the back foot moving away."
 
Bentson is back in the ring this weekend, in a rematch against South Auckland's Ikani Falekaono, at the Inga Tuigamala boxing promotion, West Auckland, chasing as much ring time as he can get leading up to his fight with NZ No1 Welterweight Bowyn Morgan at the NZ Golden Gloves in Nelson, early next month. Christchurch boxer Morgan won the South Island Golden Gloves two weeks ago. Meanwhile, Bentson's partner Hurricane Doyle also
won her welterweight division at the NI Golden Gloves, representing Fight Club East Auckland Boxing Gym.
She had the crowd in a frenzy as she dominated her opponents. Her first fight against Claudia Heijns (Central Auckland) ended in an amazingly high-scored 38-32 win for Doyle, and saw her lethal left and right hooks unleashed on an equally hard-hitting Heijns.
"It was blow for blow throughout, especially in the final round when both fighters landed a seemingly endless torrent of punches on each other," Bentson said.
It was an especially tense final against Wellsford Boxing's Megan Maka. 
 Doyle also won the Women's Most Scientific Boxer Award.