Title Nonsense

Thanks for visiting. This blog is dedicated to keeping you up-to-date on the things which are bringing the art of pugilism to it’s knees, and if we have time before Diagnosis Murder starts we’ll start a crusade to irradicate them.

First stop – what else – sanctioning bodies. There’s now over 40 of them, all armed with the ability to proclaim a boxer world champion. good grief.

The innocent beginners amongst you may want to know who they all are, and what it means. At least, you think you want to know. Well maybe another time. I don’t want to give anyone knightmares on my very first day in the job. In the blog rather.

I want to talk today though, about a fantastic new title available from the WBO and all good hardware stores. Yes folks, the WBO oriental title is up and running!

 The big 4 – the WBC, WBA, IBF & WBO  – can shift a lot of these fringe belts with their acronym in front of them. Why? Because promotors pay for them in order to have their fighters move up the rankings quicker. Yup, they are paying for a ranking.

 The WBC have the: international, Latino, CISSBB, Continental Americas, USNBC, CABOFE, Latino, Meditteranean, FECERBOX, FECOMBOX and Youth titles. That’s 11 titles up for grabs

The IBF have: International, Inter-continental, Youth, Mediterranean, Latino, Pan-Pacific. A modest 6 on top of the world title and North American title.

The WBA have: Continental Americas, Fedebol, Fedecaribe, Fedecentro, Fedelatin, Inter-continental, and…All-African (more on this later.)

The WBO have Intercontinental, Youth, Asia-Pacific, Asia-Pacific Youth, Latino, and the shiny new Oriental title.

 Now, you can probably see that most of these titles have some sort of regional or ethnic coverage. Ok, we can handle that. Nothing wrong with a boxer, who’s not quite world class, but who’s best in his region, to have a bit of glory and something to stick in the scrapbook.

But this argument is assigned to the scrap-heap when we find look into some of these title holders. The former WBC Latino champion (and now interim champion according to the WBC’s site) is JD Chapman. He is a white American from Arkansas. Not very Latino-ish don’t you think?

The four-time WBA Pan-African champ is…New Zealander Shane Cameron. On one occassion he defended the title against Bob Mirovic, an Aussie who was born in Croatia. Hmm. I’m not getting the African heritage here.

Shane Cameron - that’s New Zealander Shane Cameron - went on to contest the WBA’s North American title (NABA) against Nigerian Friday Ahunanya (admittedly a US resident.) Before that fight, the NABA champ was of course Russian mostor Nikolai Valuev. But it’s ok, because he fought North American thoroughbread JF Bergeron.

Now, I guess I could e-mail the sanctioning bodies and get them to explain this crap. They will probably say that as long as one of the fighters meets the ethnic criteria, then that’s fine – it’s hard finding two fighters from the same area after all.

In that case, why make a title out of it FFS!!!!!

I’ll tell you why – money. For every one of these titles, the sanctioning bodies get paid money by the promotors. Why are the promotors doing it? Of course it’s not because Shane Cameron saddled up to his promotor and said, “golly sir, I have such an ambition to be the champion of Africa. Could you fix it for me?”

Of course, it’s nonsense. They’re paying for these otherwise meaningless titles because it gets them into the boards’ good books and boosts their ranking. Suppose the guys compiling the rankings had two boxers of very similar ability and records, but only one place spare. Well of course, that place is going to go to the boxer whose management has forked out 4 or 5 figures in sanctioning fees to them.

 So other than the absurdity of non-Africans fighting fighting for African titles, what’s the matter with these fringe titles? Is it doing any harm?

I’d argue – yes. It’s casuing money to be channelled from the fighters to the sanctioning bodies, who are getting large sums simply for writing out these titles on slips of paper and calling up the title belt manufacturers. It is, I would have thought, quite offensive to some ethnic groups to have their race used in this way. FInally, and looking past the principle of paying for sanctioning fees – after all, it’s not a secret, we can see who’s picking up the titles – I think it unfair that these titles are the reserve of the rich. What about the fighter who has genuine Latin American blood, but also a small promotor who can’t afford to shell out a couple of K to get him the rankings boost he deserves?