The WBC Creates a New Diamond Belt, is Pacquiao Interested In It?

By Boxing News - 08/07/2009 - Comments

pac5463443345By Manuel Perez: Just when I thought boxing couldn’t get any lower than it is, I get this news today about the World Boxing Council creating a new belt called the ‘WBC Diamond Championship” belt, one designed specifically for elite fighters in catch weight bouts. The timing of the creation of the belt appears comes right at the time when World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao are mired in a tug of war about whether their November 14th bout should be for the title or not.

Pacquiao wants Cotto’s title on the line, but he’s not willing to fight Cotto at the 147 pound limit for the class. Cotto doesn’t want to put his title on the line because the bout is being held at a 145 pound catch weight, and thinks it’s not right that he should have to put his title on the line in this case.

Well, it looks like the WBC in all their wisdom have come up with the answer to this problem by creating a brand new belt just for this type of occasion.

This is hilarious. The belt would be pretty much a meaningless token, pretty much similar to earning a bachelors degree online.

I suppose the Diamond belt will have a sanctioning fee that goes a long with it. What that means is unclear, because the last I heard, Bob Arum was supposed to pay the $150,000 sanctioning fee for Cotto. Supposedly the sanctioning fee would be less for this belt.

I can’t believe Pacquiao would be interested in a belt like this? The Diamond belt, which is encrusted with 598 diamonds (real ones?) and 18 K gold, Emeralds and rubies, is belt I would never want to fight for. In a 100 years from now when there’s some history behind it, I still wouldn’t want to fight for a belt like this.

This is some kind of weird made up stuff that I can’t see any value in. If it was given to me for a victory, I’d decline it and tell them to keep it. They’d have to pay me to take the thing because I’d push the thing away from me if they started trying to get me to take it.

Cotto already has the WBO belt, which I find very little value in either, and he doesn’t need to be fighting for his made up belt.



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