By Gareth Rees: The amateur tournament World Series of Boxing (WSB) starts again this month for its third season and for the first time will have a British team taking part. The WSB is run by the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA).
Whilst WSB is technically an amateur event, it is in effect a professional tournament with salaries and prize money.
The boxers like in the professional ranks compete without vests or head guards. The bouts will be over 5 rounds instead of the usual 3 and will be scored on a 10-point must system like in the professional game.
While the event is entertaining and shows off the stars of the future, however it does make the line between amateur and professional a very grey area. But 10 boxers from the WSB qualify for the 2016 Olympics and 56 of the fighters qualifying for a brand new tournament which launches in 2013 called the AIBA Pro Boxing (APB), which again will be run on brazen professional lines.
Barry McGuigan whilst supporting the WSB has expressed his worry in the decline of amateur boxing saying to BBC Sport, “Does the word ‘amateur’ even exist anymore at the highest level of sport? I don’t think so to be honest.” AIBA president Ching-Kuo Wu believes APB could rival established professional governing bodies such as the World Boxing Council (WBC). Wu recently said “The concept of amateur boxing will no longer exist.”
However these fighters are still considered amateur and are able to fight in the WSB for their particular team, as well as being able to still fight in the traditional amateur tournaments such as the World and European Championships. But there was also news last year that the (AIBA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) were considering allowing professional fighters to take part in the Olympics.
This is effectively true when you consider a lot of countries have their boxers in one training base on a regular basis with a regular head trainer, in the British teams case it is Rob McCracken who also trains IBF Super Middleweight champion Carl Froch.
GB Boxing chairman Derek Mapp has stressed that GB Boxing has no financial obligation to WSB and that the British team will be funded by WSB and its marketing arm, before further sponsorship is found. But does this mean tournaments such as WSB and APB are about to kill of the amateur side of boxing?
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