President of the Caribbean Boxing Federation (CABOFE) and the Guyana Boxing Board of Control (GBBC), Peter Abdool, is of the opinion that the International Boxing Association’s (AIBA) new objectives will negatively affect the sport at both the amateur and professional levels.
According to AIBA, only boxers registered in their tournaments will be eligible to compete at the Olympic Games.
Boxers affiliated with other organizations will also be excluded from participating at the Olympics. In layman’s terms, amateur and professional boxers who wish to compete at the Olympic Games would have to sign a contract with only AIBA.
AIBA, the body appointed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as their designated “International Federation” for amateur boxing, has now expressed an intention of organizing professional boxing tournaments under the name WSB.
In pursuit of this, affiliated federations in each country have been instructed to delete the word “amateur” from the name of the local association/federation.
This has already happened in many countries including Guyana.
“There is growing global concern with respect to the perceived negative impact on amateur boxing worldwide as well as the perceived severe restraint in trade envisaged in their stated objectives,” said Abdool yesterday during the interview with Stabroek Sport.
“The professional boxers who have dreams of competing in the Olympics would have to forfeit whatever contract they have with another governing body and sign with AIBA that will cause a monopoly and they would eventually use the Olympics as a means to grab money in both sports” (amateur and professional),” charged Abdool.
“They have started to change a lot of rules in the amateur sport, the scoring, the headgear, these new changes and their objectives will ultimately destroy boxing,” Abdool stated.
The World Boxing Council (WBC) has issued a release on the matter.
”The World Boxing Council (WBC), widely recognized as the premier professional boxing sanctioning organization in the world, and José Sulaimán, its President, strongly object to the steps taken by the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) to organize professional boxing tournaments under the name WSB,” the WBC release stated.
“According to AIBA/WSB, only boxers registered in their tournaments will be eligible to compete at the Olympic Games to the exclusion of any boxers affiliated with any other organization.
“All boxers worldwide eligible under current Olympic Games’ requirements, regardless of their country of origin or the organization with which they are affiliated, should have the same opportunity to compete at the Olympic Games. AIBA/WSB’s actions clearly constitute an attempt to establish a monopoly and a restraint of trade,” the WBC stated in its release.
AIBA/WSB has excluded third-world countries from among their proposed tournament sites.
AIBA also withdrew the letter “A,” which denoted “amateur” from its acronym. By doing so, the new AIBA now has become part of a group of about 10 professional boxing organizations, all of which should have the same rights.
The WBC said it sent three inquiries about the AIBA/WSB’s discriminatory actions to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its president Jacques Rogge asking Rogge to endorse or disavow AIBA/WSB’s actions, which are illegal and in violation of the rights of the citizens of every nation and their legal boxing institutions.
However, according to the WBC, Rogge and the IOC have not responded.
