World Series of Boxing

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

I’m currently working on setting up a new global boxing platform, the ‘World Series of Boxing’, in association with AIBA (Amateur International Boxing Association). The inaugural season is due to commence November 2010.

www.worldseriesboxing.com

The idea behind this is to provide a ‘fresh’ alternative to the well documented problems with boxing today.

In summary, the competition will comprise of:

  1. 3 conferences (Americas, Europe, Asia) with 4 franchises in each conference. The likely or confirmed locations of these franchises are:

Americas conference (i) Illinois, US (ii) New York, US (iii) California, US and (iv) Canada
Europe conference (i) Great Britain (ii) Italy (iii) Turkey and (iv) Kazakhstan
Asian conference (i) India (ii) China (iii) Korea and (iv) Russia

  1. Each franchise will consist of a team of boxers selected from the best of the current amateur ranks and each franchise will fight the other franchises in its conference on a home and away basis - this means five bouts at a match and the winning team is the one which wins the most bouts. 1 point is awarded to the winning franchise. The franchises with the best records/most number of points in each conference will then progress to the play-offs to decide the eventual winner. In addition, the fighters with the best individual records will also participate in an individual championship final to decide the best fighter in each weight category.

  2. 5 weight classes (bantam, light, middle, light heavy, heavy).

  3. Each bout is 5 x 3min rounds, professional style of boxing, no headgear/vests.

One of the drivers behind this concept is to provide amateur boxers with an alternative to signing with Don King, Gary Shaw, Frank Warren etc… A lot of time and money is spent on developing young talent by national federations and then, following a successful Olympics, this talent is poached by the professional promoters with varying results for the boxers. Therefore, the idea here is to keep the boxers within the (safer) amateur ‘family’ while allowing them to earn a salary (and bonuses) on a professional basis whilst still retaining their Olympic eligibility. The International Olympic Committee have approved this concept.

Sorry for the long post, but I’d be really interested to know if any of you guys/girls would be interested in watching this competition, either live or on television, and whether you have any comments or observations regarding the structure etc. - negative or constructive are both welcome…!

Thanks in advance

2

Sounds pretty awesome. How close are you to actually getting this idea off the ground?

3

Thanks!

We already have a lot of the various franchises signed up. We are waiting for confirmation on some of the others but we’re very confident that we’ll have the Series up and running next year. The top boxers have all been contacted and the feedback has been excellent with them happy to participate in the auction / draft selection process.

This is a serious venture with funds behind it. In addition, the 196 national boxing federations have endorsed the concept and generally pledged their support (as it should improve their chances of retaining their top talent and improving their rosters for the Olympics and World Champs).

4

I would definitely watch this. Just make sure there’s only ONE title per weight class!!!

5

sounds interesting.

6

sure would watch this…
but shouldn’t Russia be part of Europe conference and and Kazakh part of Asia??

7

this would be awsm i think i have been hearing about it and that it might happen here in India…if so, its going to be grand for us!!

8

[quote]xydharth wrote:
sure would watch this…
but shouldn’t Russia be part of Europe conference and and Kazakh part of Asia??[/quote]

There’s still scope for adjustments to the conferences, you’re right the two may switch but at this point it’s not an issue.

9

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
I would definitely watch this. Just make sure there’s only ONE title per weight class!!![/quote]

Done. That’s part of the ethos - one winner, no ducking the best fighters.

10

Have you got USA Boxing on board with this? Even with AIBA’s buy-in, USA Boxing likes to follow their own rules domestically.

If you have amateurs getting paid, that would likely conflict with the USA Boxing ban on “professional” competition, and therefore render the athlete ineligible to compete in the US amateur system.

I think the idea sounds good, but you’ve got a bunch of bureaucratic red tape ahead of you.

Good Luck with your project.