Watching Craig Watson blow away a supposedly capable "banger" last night made me wonder why the Commonwealth belt exists.. These belts are getting worth less, considering the lack of good Commonwealth opponents for the British lads..Katsidis yeah, a good recent holder (Beating Graham Earl), but generally we are getting Africans who "can box", but just have not got the resources to train (full time) and seriously challenge for it (we seem to justify these mismatches by calling the African fighters "unknown quantities").. Don Broadhurst got his belt beating up a 4or5 bout novice.... We are seeing novices and semi pro's fighting against "full time" professionals which is just boring...the gulf is widening, what can be done to stop the mismatches.. Errol Chin
here is a list of the commonwealth countries: Antigua and BarbudaJamaica St Lucia Australia Kenya St Vincent and the Grenadines The Bahamas Kiribati Samoa Bangladesh Lesotho Seychelles Barbados Malawi Sierra Leone Belize Malaysia Singapore Botswana Maldives Solomon Islands Brunei Darussalam Malta South Africa Cameroon Mauritius Sri Lanka Canada Mozambique Swaziland Cyprus Namibia Tonga Dominica Nauru**Trinidad and Tobago Fiji Islands* New Zealand Tuvalu The Gambia Nigeria Uganda Ghana Pakistan United Kingdom Grenada Papua New Guinea United Republic of Tanzania Guyana RwandaVanuatu India St Kitts and Nevis Zambia I thought it was only Ghana and Ghana!! Errol Chin
This belt is just for young prospects to edge closer to the Lonsdale belt etc.. but the level of opposition from the African countries has been very poor of late. Ps the Earl vs Katsidis fight was for the WBO Interim Championship. Katsidis never contested the Commonwealth belt to my knowledge.
How do commonwealth rankings work, if there are any? Never seems to be much Aussies or that fighting.
minor titles that Katsidis held are IBF Pan Pacific Lightweight WBO Asia Pacific Lightweight (2009) WBO Asia Pacific Lightweight (2004-07) Australian Light Welterweight Australian Lightweight Queensland State Lightweight
commonwealths selection system is **** poor. it's a shame because it's an important part to a young fighters career or can get vetrans and expereinced journeyman fighters to a world title or at least in a ranking fight. the belt has alot of milage and alot of history. canadians today where/are dissapointed that chuvalo never got a shot at it. the few problems are The commonwealth boxing board is practically nonexsistant, and with alot of rules so is not to get any mudblood non-commonwealth fighters to a title i.e. have to live in the country for a year, full citizenship and licenses to fight in selected country under the commonwealth, which is why adrian stone wasnt allowed and fought for the ibo (which also is somthing i'll comment on). main thing is that it's not an organisation or commission as such, more of an award...somthing more archaic than the BBBofC belt/s. promotions and promoters, saying no names. like fisheye.tv promotions, would prefer to have a prospect who wins the titles without risking too much. a reason why some mangers get european and african opposition is so that they dont have to be checked by the very rigorous british boxing board of control. not just because they will usually not have enough in the tank but also they are easy to use. who will get rid of fighters who are not up to scratch who are with the BBBofC. because most of these commonwealth and european fighters are under different boards of control, the bbbofc is not needed in this situation only officiate. and this means you can get low ranked fighters to fight for it against your young prospect who needs a knockout win, televised and because it's a title it will be near the top of the bill. and as the kids are fighting for peanuts and most of there pay is going to travelling expenses and accomidation like that michael gbenga who only got 70% of what he should of earned. it's outsourcing. no disrespect to them the sad part is that ghana produces some great fighters but the good one is never picked. gbenga isnt the best 174 ghanian fighter. finally the appearance of the minor belt and the intercontinental belt has taken the business that the commonwealth belt used to have. now good championship level caliber opponants are reluctant to fight for a belt which might not guarantee in a world ranking. the minor title and the intercon gets a ranking and keeps you friendly with the true world titles. in south-africa the ibo is doing great business. by the way the watson-lusambya fight was pretty good for a short notice fight from both men. and a bit of a shocker that watson could get the ko. a rare incident where the fight was pretty balanced and stopped early.
Yeah, mistake on that stat..i thought the Earl Katsidis fight was for Commonwealth belt... Errol Chin
Large problems with the Commonwealth belt currently, are the lack of non UK and non Africans fighting for the title. In the last 7 years or so only 8 non UK/African fighters have fought for the belt, and pretty much all of those 9 were involved in just one Commonwealth fight. In that time there has been over 150 Commonwealth title fights. So to start with it's not really the Commonwealth title, it's the UK and African title. The 9 fighters are btw Australia: Bob Mirovic Ben Crampton Dale Westerman Gairy St Clair(also qualifies as Guyanese) Canada: Mark Woolnough Troy Ross Larry Sharpe Bahamas: Jermain Mackey Just 2 of those fought for the belt outside of the UK(Troy Ross and Jermain mackey), the only two fighters which won aswell.....which says another thing. Another major problem as pointed out is that it's never the best Africans who are fighting for the title. South African fighters not fighting for ('the big 4')World levels usually restrict themselves to the WBC International, IBO and WBF title fights, aswell as the South African national title. With South Africa being the strongest African country in boxing this is a huge problem. Another is the 2nd strongest(Ghana) which does have its fighters fighting for the Commonwealth belt, never has its best fighters. Infact usually it's the journeyman quality Ghana fighters that get the chance. British Promoters control the Commonwealth belt, they don't want tough opposition so they don't get it. However their actions have devalued the Commonwealth belt, meaning that their fighters winning it now means a lot less. The Commonwealth belt used to be above the British and just below the European when it came to quality. Now it's about on a par with an area title. I also didn't like the way they changed it to the gay pride rainbow colours from the old brown belt, but that's another issue.