oxygenAnthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois will meet in front of more than 90,000 screaming fans at Wembley Stadium on Saturday. This was a high-quality fight between two excellent fighters. But boxing’s powerhouse has once again chosen short-term gain over the long-term health of the sport, promoting Joshua Dubois as a fight for the world heavyweight title.
This is not the case.
The world heavyweight champion is Alexander Usyk. He earned the title this past May by defeating Joshua twice, knocking out Dubois and unifying the division titles with a split decision victory over Tyson Fury. The unification of the four sanctioned belts is the most significant boxing-related achievement to date under the stewardship of Turki Alalshikh, the head of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority. But in order to build a positive brand image in the UK and hope to promote a “Riyadh Season” event that would not cost tens of millions of dollars, the Saudi Arabian team teamed up with Eddie, who promotes Joshua and Dubois respectively. Hearn teamed up with Frank Warren to break that loose.
Boxing has four major sanctioning bodies: the World Boxing Council, the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Organization and the International Boxing Federation. In this case, the IBF belt was taken away from Usyk because he chose to pursue a contractually required rematch with Fury in December rather than face a less worthy “mandatory challenger” whom he already Eliminated him.
A mandatory challenger is an opponent who asks the champion to fight or relinquish the title. The concept stems from abuse long ago, when boxing had eight weight classes, each with a champion.
“In the past, boxers earned their way to titles by beating the other best fighters around them,” said boxing historian Mike Silver. “But that system didn’t always work, especially for black fighters. Come on. Charlie Burley never got a title shot and Archie Moore had to sign. [manager] Jack Kearns before getting his chance.
Silver went on to explain that in the 1930s, a group of state athletic commissions came together to form the National Boxing Association. Ultimately, the NBA consisted of 43 state committees, although New York (the most powerful in the nation) was not among them. When Mickey Walker gave up the middleweight title to run for the heavyweight title, the NBA held a tournament to determine his successor. It also imposed a sanction fee on the title fight. The fee is one dollar.
The NBA has also instituted a mandatory challenger system. Sugar Ray Robinson was one of the first fighters to be cut. In 1959, Robinson fought only once (against a club boxer named Bob Young, whom he knocked out in two rounds). The NBA stripped him of his title because he refused to get a rematch with Carmen Basilio. Since then, only the New York and Massachusetts state commissions have recognized Robinson as the middleweight champion, and he lost his next fight to Paul Pender.
The NBA is not perfect, but it has a certain level of fairness. Then, in the early 1960s, the NBA evolved into the World Boxing Association, and the world’s sanctioning body “politics” took over.
Sanctioning bodies in today’s world are motivated by making money for the private interests that control them. Promoters subsidize these organizations by paying to attend sanctioning body meetings, where they lobby for preferential treatment for their fighters, buying advertising in sanctioning body journals, and so on. But sanctioning fees paid for boxing matches constitute the world’s largest source of revenue for sanctioning bodies.
The public is familiar with the sanctioning fees paid for World Championship matches. But fighters also pay sanctioning fees to compete for regional belts, which allows them to advance to “knockouts” and “fights,” making them mandatory challengers. Without a mandatory designation, many sanction fees would disappear and market forces, including fan preferences, would determine the title race.
Forced defense—or refusal to fight in a forced defense—can have a big impact. The most famous example of a boxer being disqualified for not participating in a mandatory defense occurred in 1978, when the World Boxing Council stripped Leon Spinks of his title, ) declared mandatory challenger Ken Norton the “Heavyweight Champion of the World” after announcing his intention to participate in the mandatory defense. Norton aligned himself with Don King (who was close to WBC president Jose Suleiman). Ali Spinks rematch was promoted by Bob Arum. It is generally believed that these alliances were a factor in Suleiman’s thinking.
Mandating a designated challenger will also impact smaller matches. Promoter Russell Peltz recalled how years ago the WBA put bantamweight champion Jeff Chandler in a mandatory defense against Miguel Iriarte, who hails from Panama, where the WBA is based. Iriarte achieved mandatory status without fighting against quality opposition. His previous three fights were against opponents who finished his career with a combined record of 0-11. Chandler toyed with Iriarte and knocked him down in the ninth round.
Forced defenses become even more of an issue when a boxer (like Usyk) has won all four belts, has four sanctioning bodies requiring mandatory defenses against him, and can’t have fights frequently enough to satisfy everyone. . In this regard, former unified heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis recently claimed, “When you put all the belts together, a lot of promoters don’t like that because all the belts are in one place and they can’t bring them For them, it’s better for people to make money everywhere, and for the organization, they don’t want to be able to move. [their belts] About. The only people who want to be indisputable are those who fight for it and work hard for it.
Dubois went through a lot of twists and turns before becoming the mandatory challenger of the IBF. The 23-year-old suffered his first loss in 2020 when he chose not to continue fighting Joe Joyce due to a fractured left eye socket. This decision is understandable given the nature of the damage involved. More problematically, in last year’s title fight with Usyk, Dubois fell so far behind the judges’ scorecards in the ninth round that he took a knee and withdrew from the fight.
Dubois bounced back from a loss to Usyk to stop a seriously out-of-form Jarrell Miller over ten rounds in Riyadh. Then, on June 1 this year, he also fought Filip Hrgovic (then IBF mandatory challenger) in Riyadh. Hrgovic’s resume isn’t that impressive. Dubois knocked him out in the eighth round.
This makes Dubois the new mandatory challenger to the IBF. Although Dubois only held the position for a few weeks, the IBF required Usyk to fight Dubois for a second time in his next fight (something the Ukrainian was unable to do as he was contractually required to fight Fury rematch). Therefore, on June 25, Usyk gave up the IBF gold belt.
Arashih could have intervened to prevent Usyk from losing his IBF title. As things stand, most boxing powers are bowing to Saudi funding. His Excellency (as Arashih is nicknamed) could simply say: “In the future, the General Entertainment Authority will not deal with any sanctioning body, promoter or boxer involved in a heavyweight title fight for the vacant IBF belt.” But as stated above, Making Joshua Dubois a world title fight serves the purpose of the Saudi team.
Dubois was now designated the IBF “Heavyweight Champion,” but he never won an IBF title fight. Technically, Joshua is the “challenger,” although AJ is actually the A-side of the promotion and a 4-1 betting favorite. Officially, the fight was billed as a fight for the IBF World Heavyweight Championship. But “IBF” is often removed from discussions to spread the idea that it’s for this Heavyweight crown.
The winner of Joshua Dubois is expected to challenge the winner of Usyk Fury II for the heavyweight throne. But there are a lot of missteps between cup and lips. Alash recently stated that if Joshua wins, he is willing to let AJ fight Fury next, even if Tyson loses to Usyk for the second time.
At the same time, the IBF will receive a huge sanction fee from Joshua Dubois.
