Alloway Finally Gets US Visa - He Can Now Join Clottey

After nearly 10 months of waiting boxing trainer Godwin Dzanie Kotey, aka Alloway, has been granted a United States work permit ,making him eligible to travel with Joshua Clottey for the boxer’s fights in America.

Alloway was refused visa to travel for Clottey’s fight with Filipino super star, Manny Pacquiao, in the United States in March this year, but the process which was initiated some time in January this year has finally been approved by US embassy authorities.

“It is more than welcome news to me,” Clottey told Graphic Sports in an interview last Saturday. “He would have been very useful for the fight with Pacquiao, but we can’t change the past.”

Clottey lost by a unanimous verdict to Pacquiao in their WBO welterweight title fight in Dallas, and felt the absence of his trusted trainer who played a part in his formative years as a boxer could not be discounted in the loss.

The former IBF welterweight champion parted ways with compatriot Kwame Asante around August last year after his controversial loss to Miguel Cotto in New York in June 2009.

That paved the way for a reunion with Alloway ahead of his biggest fight ever against Pacquiao, but the intent was defeated by bureaucracy despite Clottey having to cut short his training in the US to come down and appeal to embassy officials for that purpose.

Alloway said he saw a champion in Clottey again, insisting that “everything else depends on him (Clottey).

“He has every quality of a champion. What is left is his commitment to a conscious programme that will bring us the title again, if the chance should fall to us again,” he said.

Alloway, who also chairs the United Ghana Boxing Coaches Association, is revered by his peers and personalities within the Ghanaian boxing fraternity, and when Bukom Banku signed a managerial contract with Golen Concepts some three weeks ago, it was the same Alloway who was drafted in as the WPBF light-heavyweight champion’s trainer.

But he said that the deal with Banku would not affect his working schedule with Clottey.