BoxRec

fergusg wrote:How can the WBC assign the mandatory challenger status to the winner of an unrelated title fight involving the belts from other organisations?

Then again, Golovkin is Cotto's mandatory challenger!

The WBC is utterly rancid! How can they force fighters from two opposing ends of the street (HBO versus Showtime) to compete against each other?

fergusg wrote:

crusader wrote:If you're not a moron perhaps you can see how it's not just an 'unrelated title fight' given that one of the competitors holds a WBC belt. I know there was recently a WBC/WBA/IBF 'unification summit', so perhaps they're becoming more open to unifications and hence making decisions like this one.

The WBC world titles will start being vacated when a politically unacceptable situation takes place (much akin to how Peter Quillin vacated his WBO belt rather than allow Roc Nation to promote a fight between himself and Matt Korobov).

Be prepared for a situation whereby second-tier fighters are officially crowned as world champions, whilst there are several non-champion fighters universally considered far than the actual title holders!

Let me reiterate what I stated before... the WBC awarded Gennady Golovkin, the holder of the WBA Super World Middleweight title, the interim WBC World middleweight belt for defeating an opponent (Rubio) who couldn’t even make weight (as he was technically a 168lb-er)!

fergusg wrote:How can the WBC assign the mandatory challenger status to the winner of an unrelated title fight involving the belts from other organisations?

Then again, Golovkin is Cotto's mandatory challenger!

The WBC is utterly rancid! How can they force fighters from two opposing ends of the street (HBO versus Showtime) to compete against each other?

fergusg wrote: Let me reiterate what I stated before... the WBC awarded Gennady Golovkin, the holder of the WBA Super World Middleweight title, the interim WBC World middleweight belt for defeating an opponent (Rubio) who couldn’t even make weight (as he was technically a 168lb-er)!

fergusg wrote:

ikorolev wrote:

fergusg wrote: Let me reiterate what I stated before... the WBC awarded Gennady Golovkin, the holder of the WBA Super World Middleweight title, the interim WBC World middleweight belt for defeating an opponent (Rubio) who couldn’t even make weight (as he was technically a 168lb-er)!

In situation when a champion can't make weight, only he is punished for that. If a challenger still beats him, he gets the belt. If the champion wins, a title becomes vacant. The same situation was in Salido vs Loma fight.

I haven't made myself clear! So I'll try to be concise... the WBC should not contravene its own rules by randomly allowing champions from one of the other three major boxing goverming bodies to become mandatory challengers to its own belt. The top-tier fighters from each of the weight divisions will probably prefer to vacate their titles in order to chase the biggest fight purse available, rather than sign-up for a fight that will litterally pay pennies.

crusader wrote:At least if he wins. Pascal is the WBC Diamond belt holder, and that title and the mandatory title shot that goes with it in this case will be on the line against Kovalev.

http://www.BS.com/stevenson-or ... ner--85459

crusader wrote:As I mentioned in my post, Pascal is the WBC Diamond champion.

Cap wrote:....paper titles only have meaning to tax accountants.

ikorolev wrote:

Cap wrote:....paper titles only have meaning to tax accountants.

Tax accountants are amateurs compared to fergusg

fergusg wrote:It’s only the WBC that currently have this rule and Kovalev can always decline the opportunity. We saw the same situation at the beginning of the year, when the WBC announced Pacquiao as Mayweather’s mandatory challenger, which resulted in Floyd threatening to drop his title. Fortunately for him, Manny declined his mandatory challenger status, because he chose to fight Timothy Bradley for his WBO belt instead.

caldo2025 wrote:How can anyone be upset that one of these alphabet organizations is stepping up and mandating a fight that everyone wants to see? I absolutely LOVE IT. People like to talk about whats wrong with boxing and how can we save boxing? Having divisions work together to make fights the fans want to see can't be anything but a great thing. Sure people with vacate belts but good. I remember the days when the power was held in the divisions and not with the promoter. This is a great thing for boxing. Great job WBC!

fergusg wrote:

PokerRob wrote:

fergusg wrote:It’s only the WBC that currently have this rule and Kovalev can always decline the opportunity. We saw the same situation at the beginning of the year, when the WBC announced Pacquiao as Mayweather’s mandatory challenger, which resulted in Floyd threatening to drop his title. Fortunately for him, Manny declined his mandatory challenger status, because he chose to fight Timothy Bradley for his WBO belt instead.

Good answers... There's only one thing that confuses my though!

What if Pacquiao had not declined his WBC mandatory challenger status against Mayweather? If an agreement couldn't be made between Top Rank and Goldenboy/Haymon it would then go to purse bids. Lets say Goldenboy/Haymon win the purse bids and get to promote the big fight. They would undoubtedly choose to air it only on Showtime (I know a fight as big as this could be aired on both Showtime and HBO but lets take that out of the equation for a second), meaning it would then be Pacquiao who is in breach of his contract (as he is contracted to Top Rank/HBO), so wouldn't that mean he has to turn down the fight and vacate his titles???

Same thing could happen between Stevenson and Kovalev, if Kovalev chooses not to decline his WBC mandatory status but then Goldenboy/Haymon win the purse bids... No???

Maybe this is the reason why Pacquiao declined his mandatory status, just incase Goldenboy/Haymon won the purse bids!

Im only theorising here, and Im far from sure!

This is getting complicated, but Pacquiao was named the mandatory challenger for Floyd Mayweather’s WBC belt in December last year… and at that time, Pacquiao was only contracted to Top Rank, not HBO.

So if there was agreement between Showtime, Golden Boy & Top Rank, then HBO could not have prevented this bout from taking place.

That being said, Manny has since extended his contract with Top Rank in May and HBO funded his contract extension signing-on bonus cheque. In his new contract, Pacquiao is now contracted to both Top Rank & HBO. Therefore, he would never be allowed to fight Mayweather without involving HBO or obtaining their agreement to step-aside.

Only the WBC has this recently-introduced rule whereby fighters holding championship belts from one of the other three major organisations can become their mandatory. This means that Manny can decline the WBC’s mandatory shot at Mayweather (if it still existed, which it doesn’t) without losing his WBO belt.

In terms of Kovalev, he’s contracted to Main Events only… and they appear to exclusively work with HBO. However, if GYM/Al Haymon won the purse bid, which is intriguingly set at a 50-50 split, they can choose to televise the fight on Showtime without any implications from HBO, but would Kathy Duva agree to this, bearing in mind her hostile relationship with Haymon (i.e. the infamous lawsuit and also losing the NBC contract)?

PokerRob wrote:

caldo2025 wrote:How can anyone be upset that one of these alphabet organizations is stepping up and mandating a fight that everyone wants to see? I absolutely LOVE IT. People like to talk about whats wrong with boxing and how can we save boxing? Having divisions work together to make fights the fans want to see can't be anything but a great thing. Sure people with vacate belts but good. I remember the days when the power was held in the divisions and not with the promoter. This is a great thing for boxing. Great job WBC!

We haven't seen a Haymon fighter on HBO or a Arum fighter on Showtime (in a meaningful fight) in a very long time...

This is due to television contracts and various political stuff like that...

I admire the WBC for pushing the fights everyone wants to see, and Im slightly more optimistic than Fergusg this can happen, and look forwards to seeing how this develops. I wouldn't be surprised if Kovalev doesn't have long left on his HBO contacts, and he and Duva sign a new Showtime contract.

However, you said yourself, "I remember the days when the power was held in the divisions and not with the promoter". You're right, the power isn't with the sanctioning bodies/divisions anymore, but with the promoter. Which means, the fighters are going to care more about what their promoters/managers/advisors/TV networks have to say, rather than one of the sanctioning bodies forcing them to either defend or vacate their title.

I guess some people are upset as they believe, not only will we still not get to see the fights we all crave for, but we will also have a bunch of less reputable title holders. This is due to the more reputable title holders vacating their titles, as they care more about their TV Contracts and the opinion of their promoter/manager/advisor than what the WBC have to say or their titles for that matter.

Or they care more about MONEY than BELTS..!