The Law wrote:questionmore wrote:Boxing Prospect wrote:
Surely if someone threatens legal action both sides start to act like adults and sort out their issues, rather than making any situation worse?
I see last week that Gianluca Di Caro posted on Facebook that his lawyers have sent a LBA (Letter Before Action) to BoxRec and that court action would be taken after 7 days.
Putting stuff like this on Facebook is guaranteed to do only one thing - and that's making any situation worse.
I would love to see on what grounds he is taking legal action against an unofficial ratings website .....
I doubt this whole thread will be up for long due to what I am about to post in reply, as I am sure Boxrec will remove.
I have taken legal advice and am pleased to say that not only can I publish the LBA (Letter Before Action) that was recently sent to BoxRec but also can say that a second case, a Class Action case against BoxRec is being prepared on behalf of all MBC/BIBA licensed boxers and promoters
Anyway below is the LBA and you should note that whilst yes BoxRec is claimed to be a private Website and not an Official Record Keeper for the sport - which is true as FightFax are the Official Record Keepers for the sport - By John and Marina's attempts to become an Official Record Keeper
(see WBC Presentation where Dr Sheppard is on record as having stated ; BoxRec is a professional boxing statistics website. We started in 1999. We’ve got nearly two million bouts in the system and 1,200,000 unique monthly visitors, and 15 million pages produced monthly. We are also the official recordkeeper for most of the world’s boxing commissions. There are 551,644 professional boxers in our database.) they negate that position and are liable for their actions
Your Ref : Mr John Sheppard / Dr Marina Sheppard
Our Ref : MAA/MA/BIBA
Date : 8th July 2016
Boxrec
25 Royal Avenue
Doncaster
South Yorkshire
DN1 2LT
By Post, Email & Fax. :
[email protected] /
[email protected]
Fax: 0207-692-5584
Dear Sirs,
Our Clients : Maltese Boxing Commission (MBC) & British & Irish
Boxing Authority (BIBA).
We have been instructed by Gianluca Di Caro, the founding Managing Director and Vice President of the Malta Boxing Commission (MBC), as well as founder and Chief Executive Officer and Vice President of the British & Irish Boxing Authority (BIBA), which on the 28th April 2016 officially took over the operations of the Malta Boxing Commission in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.
The MBC & BIBA
The Malta Boxing Commission ("MBC") was formed in June 2011 and officially became registered as a professional boxing organisation.
The MBC became affiliated with many of the Championship Organisations, including the World Boxing Union (WBU), World Boxing Federation (WBFed) International Boxing Organization (IBO) and various of the minor Championship Organisations, as well as becoming a member of the Association Of Boxing Commissions (ABC)
After 14th December 2012 when the MBC sanctioned an event at the Sky Club in Paceville, Malta and the results were immediately recorded and published by both BoxRec and FightFax the MBC launched it’s own National and International Championships, the record keeping and publishing for these Championships results were recorded by both BoxRec and FightFax.
The MBC thereafter sanctioned many further events in Malta and the United Kingdom. On Friday 18th October 2013 it sanctioned an event at the York Hall in London and the results of each of these events were recorded by both BoxRec and FightFax.
Background to the Complaint
In 2014 and 2015 The MBC sanctioned a total of 37 boxing events in Malta (12) and the United Kingdom (25) a number of which included Championship bouts, including World Championships, again the results from each of these events were recorded by both BoxRec and FightFax, however, with one of these events, a World Championship bout, it was noted that there were a number of inaccuracies in the event listing as recorded by BoxRec, as the World Championship was not recorded.
Between 6th February and 15th April 2016 MBC sanctioned one event in Malta and four events in the United Kingdom including a double World Championship headed event, the results were recorded by both BoxRec and FightFax, however there were inaccuracies in the recording by BoxRec as the World Championship was not recorded on the BoxRec website.
Boxers and promoters involved in the following events have been adversely affected by your decision to not register the events and not to update boxer personal records post event;
Lee Murtagh’s Leeds event on the 22nd April 2016,
Thomas Melville’s Paisley event on the 23rd April 2016,
Peter Turley’s Belfast event on the 29th April 2016 and 26th October 2016,
Damian Hucker’s Nottingham event on the 7th May,
David Murphy’s Newport event on the 24th June 2016,
Mark Lyon’s London event on the 25th June 2016
Russ Brown’s Unified World Championship headed event in Grantham on the 2nd July 2016
All the above boxing events were initially listed on the schedule page of BoxRec and were showing on the Boxers and promoter records but were subsequently removed.
On the 7th April 2016 Mr. David Smith Secretary General of BIBA emailed both BoxRec and FightFax informing them that MBC’s United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland operations would be changing to BIBA and out of courtesy requested that both would be the record keepers for events sanctioned by the BIBA.
FightFax responded immediately and positively to Mr Smith however no response was received from BoxRec.
Attempts by BIBA to rectify the Position
On 10th April 2016 Mr Di Caro also wrote to BoxRec and provided the BIBA Strategic Plan as well as a 131 page document covering all aspects of BIBA's operation.
On 26th April 2016 Mr Di Caro again wrote to BoxRec as it was noted that not only hadn’t the results been listed for both the 22nd and 23rd April events but also a number of MBC & BIBA licensed boxers had informed BIBA that their recorded rankings on BoxRec had been adversely altered.
One of these listings was Marianne Marston’s record listing and on checking she had noticed that her World Ranking, which was 15th in the World and 1st in the United Kingdom and her points, which were 14, had both been altered and her listing showed her as incorrectly ranked as number 2 in the UK and number 31 in the World and her points had been reduced to 7, which very much concerned Ms Marston as with the ranking as shown on BoxRec Ms. Marston’s eligibility to campaign for a World Championship was being compromised. To be eligible she is required to be ranked in the top twenty boxers of her division in the World.
Mr Di Caro has now noticed that there is a listing on Boxrec that Gabisile Tshabalala is to challenge Catherine Phiri for WBC title on August 27th.
Gabisile is contracted to defend her WBF title against Marianne Marston under the terms of the contract BIBA sent to Mbali in April 2016. Gabisile should not have been able to sign any other contracts to fight until either the fight with Marianne is undertaken or the contract cancelled.
It therefore appears that your failure in your duty of care to Ms Marston has resulted in her losing the opportunity to fight for a World title as she was under contract to do.
There are currently negotiations still ongoing to secure that World title bout between Gabisile Tshabalala and Marianne Marston however if for whatever reason that is not possible anymore then we are informed that you will be pursued for loss and damages.
On 26th April 2016 Mr Di Caro was informed of a post Mr Sheppard, co-owner of BoxRec had posted on the BoxRec British & Irish forum under the heading Unofficial Commissions. The list included the MBC as well as a number of the Eastern European Commissions that are members of the European Boxing Union. This post was made at 11:34 am on 26th April 2016.
Initially it was thought that this was an error, as the following statement headed the posting;
“We are no longer accepting information from some European Commissions pending a meeting of the EBU in June.”
Neither MBC nor BIBA offer European Boxing Union Championships. Further they are not current members of the European Boxing Union.
The reason it was felt that this may be an error on BoxRec’s behalf is that another Malta organisation, the Malta Boxing Association (MBA) are a provisional member, and BIBA are aware that the MBA has been reported to the European Boxing Union (EBU) for alleged endangerment of boxers, with regard to health and safety issues.
Mr Di Caro tried to contact your Mr and Mrs Sheppard on numerous occasions to ascertain if that was the case, but received no response to his messages on the BoxRec website as well as to his emails, texts and telephone calls.
Subsequently, Mr Di Caro received a call from World Boxing Federation (WBFed) Executive Director and European Chairman, Mr. Olaf Schroeder who informed him that Ms. Marina Sheppard had called him and told him that the Gabisile Tshabalala vs Marianne Marston World Championship Unification bout, that was scheduled to take place on the Russ Brown 2nd July 2016 Grantham event sanctioned by the British & Irish Boxing Authority will no longer listed on the BoxRec website or the result of the contest published by them.
Following the call from Mr. Schroeder Mr Di Caro immediately checked the listings of scheduled events on BoxRec and immediately noticed that the event, as well as all MBC and BIBA listed events had been removed, as had the listing for the upcoming contests on the boxer’s records. He again tried to contact yourselves to no avail.
Further Causes for Complaint
On 30th April Mr Di Caro received a call from Mr. David Murphy, who complained that the BoxRec listing for his event on the 24th June 2016 had been removed.
On 2nd May 2016 Mr Di Caro noticed that Mr Murphy had posted on the Scheduling forum that his event, scheduled to take place in Newport on the 24th June 2016, was now stated as being sanctioned by the German Boxing Association (GBA).
On the 4th May 2016 Mr Di Caro was contacted by Sebastien Pitois from the Universal Boxing Organization (UBO) on two matters regarding BoxRec, the first was in relation to his boxer, Mohamed Larabi, who won the World Boxing Foundation (WBF) Super Lightweight Championship on the Peter Turley 29th April 2016 Belfast event, which was sanctioned by BIBA. Mr. Pitois had contacted BoxRec co-owner Ms. Marina Sheppard asking if the results from the event were going to be listed, as he was aware that I had submitted them. Ms. Sheppard’s response was simply No.
The second matter that concerned him, was the Unified World Championship headed event on the 2nd July that Ms Marianne Marston and Ms Gabisile Tshabalala would be campaigning for the Universal Boxing Organization’s (UBO) Championship as well as the World Boxing Federation (WBFed), Women’s International Boxing Association (WIBA) and World Boxing Union (WBU) Championships, was no longer being listed on the BoxRec website and he expressed fears that the results from that event would also not be listed.
On 4th May 2016, Mr Di Caro was contacted by former British, Commonwealth and European Champion, Mr. Esham Pickering. Mr. Pickering had been discussing campaigning under the BIBA banner, expressing his concerns, so much so he stated that if not resolved he will re-apply for his BBBC licence.
The same day, Mr. James Waltham, who had applied for a boxer’s, manager’s and promoter’s licenses, rang and requested Mr Di Caro that his applications be put on hold until the BoxRec issue was resolved.
On 5th May 2016 World Boxing Federation (WBFed) Executive Director and European Chairman, Mr. Olaf Schroeder sent an email to World Boxing Federation President Mr. Howard Goldberg and Mr Di Caro stating that BoxRec will not be listing the results of the Gabisile Tshabalala vs Marianne Marston Unified World Championship bout asking that Mr. Goldberg inform Ms Tshabalala’s management of the situation.
Duty of Care
The delisting of MBC & BIBA events on BoxRec has caused major interference to the operations of the two organisations, as since the 26th April 2016 besides having two events cancelled, the Stephen Vaughan Malta 6th June 2016, Dave Murphy, Newport 24th June 2016, BIBA has received phone calls from numerous MBC & BIBA licence holders ( both boxers and promoters) have made contact and expressed their concerns on the situation and a number of whom have spoken of resigning their licences and joining an alternative organisation.
It has been brought to our attention that in an email that was sent by Dr. Marina Sheppard on June 7th 2016 to Jorg Milcke of the German Boxing Association in relation to a show to be sanctioned by the GBA on 18th June 2016 that it was made clear that Boxrec would only be listing BBBC events.
The above circumstances it appears point to your organisation abandoning or not exercising its common law duty of care to the professional boxers' interests which your organisation clearly purports to diligently record on its website.
In November 2015 an article was posted on the Fight News website ( here is the link
http://www.fightnews.com/Boxing/wbc-53r ... y-2-312182 ). News appeared of the WBC working with Boxrec. WBC Ratings Committee Member Dean Lohuis introduced Dr. Marina Sheppard to the 53rd WBC Convention, whereupon they explained a collaboration between the Boxrec website and the WBC.
Mr Lohuis explained "boxers’ promotions can go on this system and figure out if this match they’re going to propose will be a good match."
Dr Sheppard is on record as having stated ;
BoxRec is a professional boxing statistics website. We started in 1999. We’ve got nearly two million bouts in the system and 1,200,000 unique monthly visitors, and 15 million pages produced monthly. We are also the official recordkeeper for most of the world’s boxing commissions. There are 551,644 professional boxers in our database.
I released a new feature on the website... ‘What If?’ ... it is a feature that will give a prediction that will turn our ratings into a prediction of odds. Now, our ratings are very complicated. After every single bout, the boxer’s ratings are recalculated and we continue to go back and test our ratings. We have taken our experience, and we have taken the last 15 years that we’ve been online and put it into the future. We all want to go to a boxing show and see good fights. We don’t want to go to a boxing show and see people get hurt – it’s not interesting, and it’s not what we want to do. Our odds range from 50 percent, with 50 percent being an even chance, to 90 percent, which would be a one in 10 chance.”
By being selective in your choice of event to record and consequently omitting to update professional boxers' records as you have stated that you do, our client is of the view that not only is this negligent but it is a dangerous practice because you would then have inaccurate information on your website which could result in mismatches and consequently boxers being hurt due to being matched up with boxers whose details were not updated at the right time by your organisation.
This is exactly what you purport to prevent in your speech at the WBC Convention detailed above.
The fact that Boxrec is relied upon by a majority of managers, promoters and boxers is without question, as is evident from the extract below of an article by Thomas Hauser posted on the Secondsout.com boxing website ;
"Boxrec.com is now the most heavily-trafficked boxing website in the world. On a typical day, it has 50,000 visitors who view 700,000 pages"
"Boxrec now has close to 1,300,000 bouts in its data base encompassing 17,000 active and 345,000 non-active fighters".
"In addition, Boxrec rates every active fighter in each weight division, using a purely statistical formula based on the outcome of fights. An "active" fighter is one who has a fight scheduled or has fought within the previous 365 days. Every active fighter with one fight or more in the database is rated.
"The Boxrec ratings ... make a lot more sense than those of the world sanctioning bodies. And equally important, the process is open, verifiable, and not influenced by anyone’s subjective opinion."
It is evident from the above information that Boxrec.com sets out to provide a service for every professional boxer and consequently every manager and promoter without distinction..
With this in mind we have been informed that Boxrec did apply to be the official record keepers for the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC) at the 2015 AGM but was not successful.
It would clearly not be in your interest to have such a complaint as this levelled against you should you seek to renew that application or any other such application.
Having regard to the above information our clients are at a loss to explain your blatant selectivity whilst purporting to be neutral and above board. Mr Di Caro informs us that he is of the view that your manner of dealing with BIBA & MBC's events may be linked to his differences with the BBBofC. Mr DiCaro other roles such as being the Managing Director of the WBU Europe Ltd ( it is significant that the Championships that were not listed are those of the WBU) he was also formerly the Marketing Director of the WBFed. There have been ongoing disputes between these organisations and the BBBofC.
Legal position
We would draw your attention to the decision in White v Jones [1995] 2 AC 207 and more recently in Sebry v Companies House & Another [2015] EWHC 115 (QB) in which the claimant brought a claim for damages for negligence and breach of statutory duty against Companies House and the Registrar of Companies (“the defendants”) for incorrectly registering the Company as being in liquidation. The claimant alleged that the publication of this information caused the Company to go into administration.
The High Court determined the issues which included whether the defendants owed the Company a duty of care under statute or common law to take reasonable care and skill amongst other things to ensure that in discharging their functions and/or maintaining and/or altering the Company Register, incorrect information was not entered on the Register so as not to cause financial loss to the aggrieved company.
The court further concluded in this case that there was a ‘special’ relationship between the Company and Companies House and that there was an assumption of responsibility to the Company. As foreseeability of harm was obvious, it was fair just and reasonable to impose a common law duty of care.
The High Court concluded on the evidence that the Company’s financial downfall was caused by rumours caused by incorrect publication of information on the register maintained by Companies House.
Substantial damages were claimed by the aggrieved company and we must inform you that our clients are among quite a few other individuals and organisations that have suffered financial loss as a result of your alleged abandoning of your duty of care and resultant negligence.
Our Client's Losses
Our clients have suffered loss as a result of your failure of duty of care. Losses have been incurred as a result of the following :
• Cancellation of 4 events approximately £2400 per event shortly after the listings were removed from boxrec plus of course two further planned events that have failed to be submitted due to this matter.
• Problems with foreign opponents due to Boxrec no longer listing the events - this has cost our client's promoters heavily. Some had already paid for flights etc for opponents before they withdrew an approximate figure at this stage would be between £3000-£5,000 to be confirmed from the individual promoters.
• With respect to Marianne's Championship fight, due to the event being removed from boxrec the sponsor Monarch Communications which had allocated £2,500 for the event was lost. Favourable negotiations with another sponsor for sponsorship funds of between £2,500-£5,000 were suspended before they could be finalised. As detailed above further losses may be incurred in this matter if the title bout cannot be re-negotiated.
• BIBA's sanctioning of the Amir Khan professional boxing event in Karachi was almost put in to jeopardy when again it was not listed by Boxrec. Initially it looked like this may turn in to a major issue but after further assurances from Mr Di Caro to Amir Khan's Management Team and after it was pointed out that the event was listed with FightFax the event did eventually take place and was very successful.
Remedy Sought by Our Clients
Our clients now seek an immediate response by you as to your acceptance or otherwise of the following :
1. That you will henceforth unconditionally register all events sanctioned by BIBA and the MBC on your website.
2. That you publish an apology on your website for not registering past BIBA & MBC events and forthwith to ensure that in retrospect all such BIBA & MBC sanctioned past events are accurately recorded.
3. How you propose to compensate our clients with respect to the financial losses and other damages incurred as a result of your lack of duty of care and or negligence.
As the legal implications of failing to address the above issues can potentially be very serious for your organisation we would suggest that you take independent legal advice on the contents of this letter.
We look forward to hearing from you within 14 days failing which our clients will seek to initiate legal action.
Yours faithfully,
WENTWORTH SOLICITORS
