KEY POINTS:
New Zealand will be out to defend four titles at the five-day Oceania boxing championships beginning in Apia, Samoa, today.
In the women's events, Canterbury's Dawn Chalmers and Bay of Plenty's Kelly Woolrich will be fighting to retain the welterweight and light welterweight titles they won respectively at the 2005 championships in Papua New Guinea.
Last year's championships, to be hosted by the Solomon Islands, were cancelled because of unrest there.
Joe Blackbourn won the welterweight title and Justin Potter the middleweight gold medal in PNG, but this time Potter will join Blackbourn in the welterweight division.
The responsibility of holding on to the middleweight title has passed to Nathan McEwen from Blackball on the West Coast.
