By Emmerson Campbell
President of the Caribbean Boxing Federation (CABOFE) and the Guyana Boxing Board of Control (GBBC), Peter Abdool recently attended the historic 49th Annual Convention of the World Boxing Council (WBC) in Las Vegas, USA where it was disclosed that the WBC will launch a tournament to mark its 50th anniversary.
This potentially life changing competition which was formally ratified in Las Vegas was dubbed the WBC World Cup. The WBC World Cup is the brainchild of Mauricio Sulaiman and offers a tremendous opportunity for the young champions of each of the WBC’s Confederations, including CABOFE.
The competition was formalized with a major TV Network and formally announced at the WBC Convention in Las Vegas in December 2011 by President Jose Sulaiman in the following WBC press release:
“THE WBC WORLD CUP HAS BEEN AGREED”
The president of the WBC Jose Sulaiman Chagnon said that the WBC World Cup has been approved in the 49th Convention, the tournament will last 40 weeks and it will begin in May 2012.
The president added that he reached an agreement with the US TV and the final prize award will be US$250,000 for each division.
He also said that “it’s one of the biggest and most ambitious programmes of the WBC in almost 50 years, because all the champions of the organization will take part.”
It was also disclosed that the TV company will select 5 to 7 cities to broadcast the bouts of the seven classic divisions; fly, bantam, feather, light, welter, middle, and heavy, in addition to the only “super” division, which will be super lightweight.
The basis of the televised competition is a relatively simple one in which the standing champions of the WBC‘s ten confederations will compete with each other to establish an overall champion in the following categories: Flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, super lightweight, welterweight, middleweight and heavyweight.
Quite beyond the opportunity it presents for young fighters in Guyana and the Caribbean to compete, it offers excellent financial rewards as well as the opportunity to be seen all over the world on an enormous Global Television Network. It is too good an opportunity for any of our young upcoming fighters to miss out on, Abdool noted.
He said further that the impact of the announcement of the WBC World Cup on CABOFE and indeed on the activities of the Guyana Boxing Board of Control is significant. Guyana’s Fight Night Programme which is now in its 20th month has seen a total of 108 professional fights.
The objective is largely to produce an environment in which local fighters are able to compete more often against better opposition and in the public eye so that they develop their skills in every aspect of the sport and become better positioned to move on from local titles to regional and eventually world titles.
The programme has had an excellent impact on local boxing and a number of local and Caribbean fighters have distinguished themselves and are now ready for international careers.
Notably among them are Simeon Hardy, Edmond Declou, Kwesi Jones, Elton Dharry, Lennox Allen, Miguel Antoine & Shawn Cox of Barbados, Mandessa Moses, Mark Austin, Iwan Azore, Dexter Marques, Kurt Bess, Kevin Placide and Kurt Sinnette of Trinidad and Tobago, among others.
The announcement of the WBC World Cup seems to now gel with the efforts of both CABOFE and the GBBC. It essentially means that the young fighters who have made it through the rigors of the Guyana Fight Night programme and stand to be CABOFE champions have the opportunity of a lifetime to claim for themselves unprecedented fame and fortune.
The winner of each division will walk away with US$250,000 and even the very first round of elimination fights as CABOFE champions, according to reports, may earn as much as US$20,000 to US$30,000 for the loser and US$50,000 to US$70,000 for the winner, sums that are usually not readily available at this stage of a fighter’s career.
Clearly there is going to be a race to fill all of the titles of CABOFE beginning with the welterweight title which will be fought for at the end of this month’s Guyana Fight Night Card on the 27th at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall between Iwan ‘Pure Gold’ Azore and Simeon ‘Candy Man’ Hardy.
Considering what is at stake, it should be an epic competition.
Of equal interest will be the race for the flyweight, super lightweight and middleweight titles which will all have to be decided in the next four months prior to the start of the tournament in May. And fight fans will certainly be among the beneficiaries.
The convention attracted over 100 world champions and literally thousands of boxing fans, referees, judges, officials, trainers, sports journalists and promoters. The event may well have been the biggest ever in WBC’s history.