Nasser calls for IBO ban

Anthony Mundine speaking out about Danny Green and Paul Briggs fight sparks talk of bell ringing for boxing changes

• by Mike Colman
• From: The Courier-Mail
• July 30,

This content is protected

ONE-SIDED: Ant





INTERESTING to hear Anthony Mundine on Wednesday night, bagging the Danny Green-Paul Briggs fiasco. Mundine would never have fought Briggs, he said.

"If I'd done that they would have sent me to jail."
He was joking of course. Otherwise he would have received life for fighting Lester Ellis.
How's these numbers: Lester was 37 years old, 17kg over his peak weight and hadn't been in the ring for six years and three months when Mundine fought him eight years ago. It lasted four rounds.
Australian Medical Association president Kerry Phelps tried to have that fight banned for fears over Ellis's safety, but it went ahead just like Green-Briggs last week.
Difference was Green-Briggs was for a world title, leading to the second most asked question in boxing (behind "why?"): How?
As in how does Paul Briggs, a boxer who hasn't fought for three years and who has been refused a medical clearance by the NSW authorities, get a shot at a world title in Perth?




Well, it all gets down to this: there are world titles and there are world titles.
Boxing historian Grantlee Kieza made an interesting observation recently: when Australia's Jimmy Carruthers won the world bantamweight title in 1952 there was only one title for each weight division. Only eight men in the world could call themselves champions.
There are now about 150 boxers who can make that claim and to prove it they can point to a championship belt around their waist adorned with the letters of any number of sanctioning bodies. You have your WBA, your WBC, your WBO, WBF, IBF, IBO and your IBA.
So what is a sanctioning body? Well, basically it is someone you pay money to in order for them to call your fight a world title and give you a belt at the end of it.
Danny Green's belt comes from the International Boxing Organisation (IBO) which operates out of offices in Florida. One of the newer world boxing authorities (it came along between the IBF and the WBF – or it might have been the IBA, it definitely had an B in it) it describes itself as "The Champion of Integrity".
What sets the IBO apart from the older, more recognised bodies such as the WBA, is that it doesn't rely on a committee of experts to work out its rankings. It uses a computer. A computer that never says, "Are you out of your mind?" which is how Paul Briggs was able to fight for a world title last week.
See, every month the WBA committee members sit down and work out who they think are the top 10 boxers who fight under their banner. For the No.10 fighter to move up the ranks he must challenge the No.9 fighter and beat him, and so on up the ladder. The world champion must fight the No.1 or No.2-ranked fighter within nine months of his past defence.
The IBO doesn't work like that. It doesn't have its own rankings per se. Instead it feeds the details of everyone from all the organisations, from WBA to WBZ, into the computer. The IBO world champion then picks who he wants to fight from the top 35 ranked contenders, pays the IBO a fee of around $20,000 plus airfares and accommodation for IBO judges and a supervisor and everyone's a winner. Except for the loser of course – although with $200,000 for 29 seconds work, Paul Briggs might disagree.
But wait, I hear you cry. Even feeding his excellent past record into the computer, how could Briggs possibly be in the top 35 contenders when he hadn't fought for three years?
Excellent point, and one which I went to the very top to clear up. Unfortunately the president of the IBO, Edward S. Levine, was on vacation and unavailable and the vice-president, his son, Jeremy D. Levine, was on his way back from Perth where he had been supervisor of the fight. But I did receive a prompt reply from the assistant to the president, Maria Canizares, who advised that the challenger can be ranked between 36 and 50 as long as "he has not lost his last fight, not lost any two of his last four fights by knockout and has a positive record in his last six fights".
And then the whammy, the $200,000, world title clause: "There is no time requirement with regard to when they had their last fight".
Now taking all those conditions into account the good thing is that Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier are not eligible to fight Danny Green for an IBO world title. The worrying thing is that Joe Bugner is.
Don't laugh. Sillier things have happened. Ask Lester Ellis.



hows the IBO ranking system for who can fight for a World Title.:nut
Green v Bugner.make it happen.

This content is protected

This content is protected

This content is protected

This content is protected

This content is protected

This content is protected