Yukoner wins first National Championship of Canada boxing belt

Published 12:00 pm Monday, July 20, 2026

By Noah Korver Local Journalism Initiative

For the first time, a Yukoner has won a gold belt awarded by the National Championship of Canada, an organization that oversees the country’s competitive boxing matches.

Whitehorse boxer Mponda Kalunga brought the professional boxing crown home, to Whitehorse, after taking the vacant NCC Canadian Super Welterweight Championship with a first-round technical knockout victory over Adrian Bembridge on May 5 in Toronto.

Being awarded the title of champion has been a dream for over a decade, says Kalunga, who won his first ever medal in Whitehorse in 2007.

“This has always been my goal since I was 16. I came [to Whitehorse] in 2007 for the Canada Games and I got the silver medal. I fought a little bit more as an amateur, and then went off and grew up in life, I went to school…but boxing has always been that end goal.”

After graduating from York University, Kalunga moved to Whitehorse and worked a variety of jobs, including several years with the territory government, but says that boxing has always been what he wanted to pursue.

“No matter what work I did, I was like, you know what? I need to follow that dream,that thing in my heart,” says Kalunga. “I couldn’t sleep without thinking about it… so, the passion was always there. I just arranged everything else around my life to make sure that (boxing) was just the priority.”

Starting in the professional rankings in 2015, and training using an ad-hoc space in his backyard that includes a stack of old tires in lieu of a punching bag. Kalunga worked his way up into higher-level fights for more than a decade before finally stepping into the ring to square off for the Welterweight Championship belt this May.

Now with one championship to his name, Kalunga says he aims to defend it at least three times in order to set the record for the longest held championship title in the weight class. Kalunga is looking to advance the sport further in the territory and hopes to some day open a gym of his own.

“There’s a lot of talent here that could be brought onto the scene. It just takes somebody to have the facility where they feel comfortable enough to come and hang out, you know, where there’s good mentors around,even if they don’t want to work out for the first time,” says Kalunga. “So, that’s in the works.”

Contact Noah Korver at noah.korver@yukon-news.com