It’s really hard for me to write about something I feel passionately about, without sloping off into some kind of tirade.
Well, I will try my damnedest.
The ‘Cold War’ that has riddled the sport amongst the upper-echelon of the promoters world, has for year upon year upon year, deprived the true fans of the sweet science of the big fights. Why?
The top promoters in the UK are Matchroom Sports (Eddie Hearn) and Queensbury Promotions (Frank Warren).
In the USA we have the likes of Golden Boy (Oscar De La Hoya/Richard Schaefer), Top Rank (Bob Arum) and Mayweather Promotions (Leonard Ellerbe). These aforementioned promoters are at the top, of the pile, and they wish to maintain that position. By giving fighters who are not under their promotional ‘umbrella’, this takes money away from them.
To me (and I may be wrong on this) it doesn’t seem like they are too fussed with losing money, they just don’t want to give the money, that they feel they can keep hold of by having two ‘in-house’ fighters square off against one-another, as opposed to giving rivals a piece of the plentiful pie.
Is that wrong or is it right? It’s wrong.
With four legitimate ‘World Title’ belts on offer in every weight division (WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO and of course The Ring magazine belt SMH!) not to forget the likes of WBC Diamond champion belt, the WBO and WBA ‘super’ champion belts and the champion of the decade belt the WBO invented to put some kind of sanction fee on Pacquiao vs Marquez IIII.
Then because of these ‘Silver’ and ‘Super’ titles that are given out, we now have a ‘regular’ champion.
Jesus wept, he seriously did!
I’m not finished there just yet, hold on – there are also WBA and WBO intercontinental and international championship belts, WBC silver champion and a whole host of other (and I use this term extremely loosely) world championship belts.
These titles hold less weight than the belt I am sporting around my waist right now. Is it any wonder the casual fans can’t for the life of them work out, who the hell is the legitimate world champion of any division. This needed to stop, an age ago, something has got to be done for the integrity of the sport, well, what’s left of it. I don’t know how many times it needs to be said, one world champion in each weight class, simple as that.
This however, will not happen unless some drastic changes are made to the world title/sanctioning fee situation.
Basically each individual promoter ties the hands of their fighters, by picking their fights for them. If a mandatory challenger gets in line for a shot, at their fighter, from another promotional stable, they will drop the world title and move up to the next weight division.
We recently saw rumours that Floyd Mayweather Jr dropped his WBC welterweight strap, as Manny Pacquiao became his No.1 contender and you sense that the WBC will give Floyd ’emeritus status’, so he is not obliged to fight “Pacman” who then fights for the supposed ‘regular’ version.
All of this is through one thing and one thing only, greed and that’s the bottom line.
I mean, what comes next? The Golden Boy world title or the Matchroom world title! Every promoter will be wanting a world title belt next with their own name attached to it! Seriously though, there are way, way, way too many ‘world titles’ and an incredible amount of promoters that don’t need to be there at all.
The more belts and the more promoters that keep rearing their heads is only going to do one thing and one thing only, stopping the best fighters fighting the best fighters. That is to the detriment of the sport.
If there was say just one promoter lets say, would we get the best fights available? Maybe, maybe not, but we would stand a lot better chance than we would as things currently sit.
It’s so shameful that the sport I love is without a shadow of a doubt the most corrupt sport in the world.
The best thing about this is all of the wrong people are in charge at the top levels in the sport of boxing and yet nobody seems to want to make it better, more structured and clear across the board.
As long as they are making too much money from farcical fights, this will never change.
It only takes one person to start a chain reaction in the sport. If one fighter was given a bout to fight for a regular world title (which isn’t a world title, just like the WBA ‘regular’ Carl Froch holds, as Andre Ward is the real WBA champion) and I know its not easy for them to do, they are contracted and their hands are tied in many ways, but if they stood up and said look, ‘I got into this sport to become a legitimate world champion, I am not and will not ever fight for a concocted world title, I have more pride than that.’
The likes of the top promoters who get themselves inducted into the Boxing ‘Hall Of Fame’ some are very deserving, I agree. There should be a new a section invented, seeing as they knock up plenty of bogus belts, the shady promoters should be entered into ‘The Hall Of Shame’.
Will this ever happen, disappointingly, I doubt it.
