I know this maybe a bit early, but can anyone see this tournament structure stay in the sport of boxing? It works in other sports especially international team sports, but there are some issues with the tournament format that may present themselves in it's debut in boxing: 1 Injuries - very obvious why this is a problem. 2 It's a locked tournament. With the way boxing is controlled by media and promoters, some very good fighters outside the tournament is probably gonna be out in the cold (although I think they got it right this time with selecting the best fighters). 3 This tournament structure have to be run in intervals, which means IMO that the champ of the super six will have to go through a similar tournament (maybe entering at a later stage of the tournament fighting 1/2 tuneups beforehand), to retain his status as the best in the world. 4 The big punchers with strong chins having the advantage in the group stage since with a knockout you get 2 points instead of 1, which essentially is woth as much as to decesion wins. This is a very fundamental discussion, since it estimates what a win is worth mathematically instead of a more subjective consensus. This in the most extreme case could lead to a diffirent kind of boxings alphabet soup, only this time it would be a digits soup where a SD, MD and UD would be scored differently and a KO, TKO and RTD also would weight differently on the points scale. Maybe just change this a little bit so the points ratio decision\stoppage would be 2/3 instead of 1/2. The whole thing is very simple as it is... which is good because in the olden days when there was only one champ boxing was more simple and more popular, but then again boxing politics and culture have changed, and nostalgia also covers the truth in some cases. Anyway the good old days are over, and they were better time for boxing for sure. This tournaments simplicity requires a lot of people willing to do what's right for the sport fx selecting the best fighters becomes very important, as it already is, but the tournament is not as flexible as one sanctioning body would be because of the length and number of fights. One upcoming fighter would have to wait till the end of the tournament or maybe an injurie of one of the participants to get his breakthrough. There's alot of interesting perspectives and some of the solutions could be a ranking system which is based by fighters qualifying themselves to the main fights in their division. Because of the small number of fights the established stars fight every year the lenght of the tournaments should also be considered. I think it would be good if one fighter is only bound to 3 matches max that can be don in 1 year without injuries. Maybe two simultanious running tournaments consisting of a mix of champs and talents would be better, and then some might have easier with the thought of being replaced if injurie happens. I think there are many good things about this tournament fx the fighter is guaranteed good fights even if he lose his 1st one. 1 champ is very good aswell, and I also like the idea of a fighter getting rewarded for his roughness and power albeit there is problems with this as stated in the above issues. The best thing is the promoters don't have to negotiate big fights so much as long as the tournament is respected. I just thought of this, so it's a bit unclear to me how this tournament platform would co-exist along the rest of the boxing world, if it would even be allowed. But now it seems it's a good chance to reflect on theese challenges as the titles lose more and more value and the hardcore fans are the only real judges of the game today. If this tournament can help boxings future why can/can't it be implemented permanently in boxing from now ? What the deal here...
