Father & Son? Not in the World Boxing Council!

November 24th, 2009

By Mark Fletcher: I was left a little bewildered the other day after British magazine ‘BoxingNews’ (Not to be confused with boxingnews24.com). Inside the magazine there was a column stating that the World Boxing Council were hoping to stop fathers from working in the corners of their sons, what puzzled me more was a statement by WBC president Jose Sulaiman saying that there was already a ban in place but it was being regularly flouted.

Well, this just sounded to me that up till now they have been happy to turn a blind eye to this rule, especially when they’ve had marquee fighters like say, former WBC welterweight king ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley selling out big venues, getting recognition as the divisions best welterweight and therefore enhancing the WBC’s reputation as the No1 organization (plus PPV ratings) despite him having his father, Jack Mosley in his corner for nearly all of his career.

But it doesn’t end there, cross the pond and there is Richie Woodhall, a former WBC super middleweight champion and also WBC middleweight contender who was trained by his father Len Woodhall. And of course there is Borings most charismatic father and son connection, Enzo and Joe Calzaghe.

Although Joe was the long term holder of the WBO belt his last fight at super-middleweight was a unification fight for Mikkel Kessler’s WBA, and of course WBC belts. Now tell me, a 55,000 seat arena sold out, PPV ratings through the roof and the best super-middleweight of the last decade fighting for your organizations belt would you let this one slide? I bet the WBC’s rule wasn’t even a factor.

I’ve always had the utmost respect for the WBC and have always felt that their organization picks the best mandatory’s for their champion and would not have written this article without doing some research, unfortunately the WBC’s website was uninformative on the matter, though other websites did say that too many fatalities had occurred when the father had worked the corner of their son yet no statistic was supplied.

I would never want to question a matter that regarded a boxers safety but when the Mosley’s, Mayweathers, Calzaghes, Woodhalls and Judahs exist it is hard to ignore. There have even been some great father and son combinations known to exist and do other organisations belts justice eg. Felix Trinidad (Snr and Jnr) and former WBO featherweight king Scott Harrison along with his father Peter.

I just hope that when Nathan Cleverly breaks onto te world scene its not the WBC belt he sets his sights on as since leaving the Calzaghe stable he has shown vast improvement under the guidance of his father.