By Jeff Aronow: WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman revealed this week that he plans on reducing the sanctioning fees, and he’ll be working with the promoters to help the sport of boxing get started again.
Sulaiman isn’t saying anything about reducing the number of titles the World Boxing Council has. This would be a good time for the WBC to not only do away with sanctioning fees but also eliminate all the fluff titles that they.
Fans likely wouldn’t mind if the promoters came in with a large broom and swept out all of the sanctioning bodies altogether. If the promoters chose to ignore the sanctioning bodies, things would change.
All the different belts do nothing but confuse boxing fans, making them wonder who the real champions. You don’t see this kind of thing in the NFL. Try imaging six to eight Super Bowl champions. That’s how boxing is right now.
The WBC can help out by eliminating these titles:
- WBC interim
- WBC Eternal Championship
- WBC Diamond
- WBC Silver
The WBC isn’t the only one with too many belts. We see this with the WBA as well with the following straps:
- WBA ‘regular.’
- WBA Super World
- WBA Gold
If the fighters and the promoters chose to ignore the titles, then there would be no problem. The sport would need to come up with a way of picking one champion for each division and have some organization that oversees the belts. Ideally, there needs to be just one title for each division instead of what we see now, with there being as many six titles.
At middleweight right now, the champions are as follows:
- WBC – Jermall Charlo
- WBC Franchise – Saul Canelo Alvarez
- IBF – Gennadiy Golovkin
- WBA ‘regular’ – Ryota Murata
- WBA Super World – Canelo Alvarez
- WBO – Demetrius Andrade
It’s going to be potentially tough for the promoters, some of which might not be able to pay as much to the fighters due to fights being held behind closed doors initially. Even when fans are allowed to return to the live fight events, it’s possible that many won’t right away.
There’s the risk for the fans of potentially getting sick while in a crowded event and the cost of the tickets and travel. Few people are working in the States right now, and it’s going to be difficult for them to justify going to see a live fight when boxing restarts.
The WBC also plans on potentially having judges sit at home to score the fights rather than sitting at ringside.
Getting rid of the sanctioning fees would be a good start, and then eliminating all the redundant titles. You can argue that finding new ring announcers might help lower costs as well. It’s unclear how much some of them get, but it would be a good idea to get some new blood in there at a lower price.
Ringside girls aren’t needed either. If you’re going to cut costs, why stop with the sanctioning fees and judges? Might as well go the whole route and eliminate the ringside girls and change ring announcers.