Boxing's chaos theory
Teofimo, purse bids and the fundamental disorder in the sport of boxing. Or: How I learned to stop worrying and embrace the madness...
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Finding comfort in the chaos
THE LONG READ
Late February saw a huge story break within the boxing world. Was it due to the the return of an elite talent to the fight game? The announcement of a long-anticipated unification superfight? Not on this occasion…it was actually the purse bids for an already-confirmed mandatory title fight, a bout which most people hadn’t been particularly excited about beforehand. On February 25th, the International Boxing Federation (IBF) hosted purse bids via Zoom for their Welterweight champion Teofimo Lopez’s mandatory defence against Australian George Kambosos Jr. During the proceedings, seemingly out of nowhere, upstart social media platform Triller blew the established companies out of the water with an incredible bid to secure the bout, leaving the likes of Lopez’s own promoter Top Rank in the dust…
Prior to the purse bid, it wasn’t clear whether Triller would join the running, but it was always a possibility. On occasions like this where the fighters involved in mandated title contests and their promoters (specifically Lopez and Top Rank in this instance) are unable to make a financial agreement before a specific deadline, then all promoters who are registered and approved with the governing body (in this case the IBF) are allowed to take part in what is essentially an auction. The winning bid figure is then split between the champion and the challenger (minus the percentage going to their promoters), with the majority going to the title holder, and the promoter who put up the cash can place the fight on a card of their choosing.
Before it began, the main story thread emerging appeared to be that Matchroom Boxing (supported by DAZN and Kambosos Jr.’s promoter Lou DiBella) would be competing with Top Rank to stage the fight at the same time they were deep in negotiations for the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua megafight.
In the end, they did make a bid - something which Top Rank's Bob Arum was far from happy about - however Triller’s $6 million+ punt almost doubled the amount laid down by Eddie Hearn’s outfit. Lopez, who has had fairly public disagreements with his promoter Top Rank when refusing their comparatively paltry offers to stage the fight, was vindicated of his value in the open market, with 65% of the Triller bid heading his way. Both Teofimo and DiBella summed up the prevailing feeling on Twitter…
Just like he did when he defeated pound-for-pound king Vasyl Lomachenko surprisingly clearly last year to also win the WBC, WBA and Ring Magazine Welterweight belts, Lopez had backed himself and had ended up a big winner. By allowing this fight to go to purse bids, he has also perhaps offered a glimpse of a high-risk-but-potentially-high-reward negotiation tactic which could become a new trend for boxers who perceive themselves to have been under-valued by their promoter. It’s certainly true that the relationship between Top Rank and Lopez, Matchroom and DAZN continues to sour.
On the face of it, this seems a huge amount to pay for the rights to promote this fight. Lopez is one of the fastest rising stars in the sport, but the fights people really want to see him in are against Gervonta Davis, Ryan Garcia or Devin Haney, and most people haven’t really heard of Kambosos, despite him winning a split decision last year against Lee Selby to gain the mandatory position. Triller are clearly keen to become a major disruptor in the industry though, and their jumping in to the fray when this opportunity arose is one of the most ‘boxing’ things to happen in boxing so far this year.
The tech upstart Triller, a TikTok competitor app with increasingly large usage amongst people considerably younger than me, entered the boxing market last year by promoting a card headlined by an exhibition fight between long-retired Mike Tyson and 52-year-old Roy Jones Jr. YouTube star Jake Paul knocked out ex-NBA player Nate Robinson on the undercard, and Snoop Dogg was on commentary. To the bemusement of boxing purists, and by appealing to a completely new audience, it became one of the most successful boxing pay-per-views in the history of the sport. Triller might decide to place Lopez vs Kambosos as the co-main of a pay-per-view headlined by the proposed trilogy fight between Tyson and 58-year-old Evander Holyfield, who last shared a ring 24 years ago, as wild as that sounds.
To the non-boxing fan, who isn’t consuming news and content on the fight game consistently, this might all seem a tad bewildering. For boxing fans though, this is par for the course. It is the sometimes bizarre, often poorly-regulated and unwieldy structure of boxing which ALLOWS for this kind of story to develop more than in any other sport, in fact it is an ideal breeding ground for a rhythmic beat of surprises. The lack of total oversight within the sport - with a tangled web of governing bodies, promoters, advisors and more across the world - can and does deliver a lot of negatives, but this open market also means that there are fascinating narratives weaving throughout the boxing landscape.
Boxing can be bemusing, infuriating, enthralling, disturbing, all in equal measure, and sometimes simultaneously. As a boxing fan, you take many things for granted which non-fans would find totally perplexing.
This kind of perpetual turmoil is certainly not reflected just in purse bids. Trying to explain the frankly insane situation with governing bodies and the number of world champions swimming around the game to someone who doesn’t go to BoxRec regularly could prove equally difficult. They might already see boxing’s governing bodies as a bizarre web of shady dealings and random letters jumbled together (not totally incorrect there), but they will probably still end up more confused than they were beforehand…
“So there’s four boxing world champions in EVERY weight division?”
"Well, yes, kind of. There are four recognised major governing bodies - WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO - and each one has its own champion in the 17 weight divisions. All four have their own way of doing things, with completely independent and usually wildly different ranking systems to determine challengers. Then there are more fringe organisations like the IBO who also have world champions, and a magazine called The Ring has its own belts which are considered very important. Oh, and you’ll hear some refer to lineal championships, which purport to have a lineage back to the days before there were so many different organisations…”
“Right…”
“Oh, and in more recent years some of the governing bodies have decided to introduce Franchise, Super, Regular and Interim champions, none of which are treated quite the same as their World title holders, and if a fighter doesn’t defend his title over a period of time defined by the governing body they can be made a ‘champion in recess’…”
“OK…”
“So for example at the moment the WBA has Super and Regular champions in each division, plus Interim title holders in some weight classes. The WBC also have Canelo as their Franchise Middleweight champion, a "special designation and status" which they can bestow upon a fighter, though he hasn’t actually fought in that division since May 2019…”
“I think I’ve had enough information for now, thanks…”
“But wait, wait, I still need to tell you about the Diamond and Silver belts. Oh, and the WBC has announced a new weight called Bridgerweight which is between Cruiserweight and Heavyweight…”
Silence
END SCENE
It’s easy to see how this quagmire can put people off, and the conclusion from most is that boxing needs massive reform, with many people looking at a model closer to the UFC as being a theoretical solution for boxing’s ills. Even though MMA is much more than just the UFC, for many around the world this brand IS mixed martial arts, and it is incredibly straightforward to follow. There is a single ranking system, all fighters are contracted to the same company, each event looks pretty much exactly the same, everyone wears Reebok (soon to be Venum) gear, and generally fights seem to just get made - keep winning in your division and you will get a title shot against the best pretty sharpish. That is definitely not always the case in boxing.
The fact that UFC fighters are paid considerably less than boxers at the very top level is certainly a discussion point, however lower-ranked UFC fighters have a guaranteed income and incentives (fight and knockout of the night bonuses, for example) which struggling boxers could only dream of. UFC being a well-run business model rather than an open market free-for-all which no single entity actually controls is the main reason why the MMA goliath was sold in 2016 for $4 billion. After flirting with launching in to the boxing world himself for a while through Zuffa Boxing, UFC President Dana White last year closed that chapter for now by stating that boxing is "screwed up and broken".
In many ways, Dana does have a point. When you actually stop to think about it, a lot of what happens in boxing IS complete madness. Looking at the situation objectively though, it is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which boxing’s litany of champions and organisations can be streamlined, the messy nature of the business is just too ingrained, so the days of anything like a single world champion in each weight division as many have called for will likely never come again.
Matchroom Boxing managing director Eddie Hearn - whose company has made incredible business strides across the world in recent years - was recently spelling out something of a roadmap for moving towards domination of the sport of boxing, featuring many of the traits which have made the UFC so successful. His mandate for change includes much less focus being put on the belts controlled by the governing bodies, although exactly how that could be achieved is unclear.
Even if Matchroom WAS somehow able to move closer to becoming a boxing equivalent of the UFC, there would still be disruptive outfits like Triller ready and able to jump in to the fight game, looking to shift the balance of power. Boxing has been built on far more shaky ground. The UFC, despite the existence of Bellator and other mixed martial arts companies, is pretty much a closed shop at the top of the MMA mountain. Boxing is a disparate sport a long way from becoming a single league, with the power and money in the sport almost irredeemably splintered. Even though this fractured ecosystem means we will inevitably miss out on the best fighting the best on occasion, as we have in the past, the wild west nature of the whole thing is at least successful in very rarely being boring.
Take for instance the WBA’s treatment of its own world titles. This came to a head in late January amid massive criticism when Don King (one of boxing’s most prominent and controversial figures for decades) was allowed to promote a fight between Trevor Bryan (inactive for 29 months) and Bermane Stiverne (knocked out in his previous two fights) to crown a new ‘Regular’ WBA Heavyweight champion, after the title had been stripped from Manuel Charr, who was the reigning holder of this ‘title’ despite no fights since 2017. At the same time, the REAL WBA Heavyweight title holder Anthony Joshua, who has been made their SUPER champion, was still very much active.
So why exactly do we need another WBA Heavyweight champion when one already exists? We don’t - it is a complete mess. The WBA is certainly not the only guilty party in this area, but they are undoubtedly the worst, and they will be getting sanctioning fees every time these belts are trotted out. Is it scandalous? Certainly. Will this kind of thing be stamped out any time soon? Unlikely. Should we just embrace the chaos? Probably.
Don’t get me wrong, I also regularly find boxing confusing and infuriating in equal measure. There are too many belts, far too many. Politics means that often the best do not end up facing the best. Fighters are inexplicably made number one contenders when they clearly shouldn’t be in that position. The governing bodies routinely make strange, money-driven decisions which belittle the whole sport. Boxing seems completely unable to improve the often unexplainable judging decisions in major fights. Especially concerning is boxing’s inability to be able to clean up its act when it comes to the involvement of advisors who create a dark cloud over the fight game. A lot of this simply does not happen in other, more organised sports.
In a strange way though, there is solace in carnage. The concept of chaos theory is in itself a huge contradiction - a mathematical way of predicting the behaviour of inherently unpredictable things, seeing sense in apparent disorder. Given everything wrong with boxing, the whole thing SHOULDN’T make sense or work at all, but somehow it just about does.
Despite shooting itself in the foot regularly, boxing is still able to elicit emotions unlike any other sport, and out of the blue news lines such as the Lopez-Kambosos purse bid situation are uniquely created by the fight game’s convoluted structure. The sport and business of boxing is certainly befuddling at times, but it is also deeply fascinating, and the mayhem seems to only make it more so.
On the Joseph Parker vs Junior Fa undercard this past weekend, New Zealand prospect David Nyika’s pro debut was called off in bizarre fashion after just 29 seconds. When asked about what had happened later in the same broadcast, he didn’t seem too surprised, and his response was completely to the point: “This is boxing, boxing is chaos”. I couldn’t have put it better myself.
There is no sport like it, for both the good and that bad that comes with that…and the boxing universe somehow holds together almost despite itself. Teofimo and his financial advisor will certainly be glad of the chaos.
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THE BOXING AGENDA
Quick takes on the biggest, best and most interesting stories in boxing…
Canelo Alvarez ending up hammering overmatched Avni Yildirim last Saturday night in Miami, as pretty much everybody predicted, with the fight being called off after the third round when the towel was thrown in by Avni’s corner. A man of two nicknames, Yildirim was more ‘Mr Robot’ than ‘The Turkish Wolf’ on the night as he landed just 11 punches in total, and proved to be the worst world title mandatory challenger since Apinun Khongsong - who was stopped by unified Junior Welterweight champ Josh Taylor in just 161 seconds last September. Canelo, after successfully defending the WBA (Super), WBC and Ring Magazine Super Middleweight titles, now moves on to a big unification bout against WBO champ Billy Joe Saunders, who will undoubtedly prove to be a bigger challenge for the Mexican megastar. But can Billy Joe really look to upset boxing’s kingpin? Although unquestionably a supremely talented boxer with an unbeaten pro career, employing a fluid style which should give Canelo some puzzles to solve, BJS’s days of looking world class were at middleweight. He has also been quite inactive in recent years and he rarely (if ever) manages to stop his better opponents…with history telling us he won’t be able to win a decision against Canelo, especially in Vegas. He does seem motivated though, saying he has the tools required to beat Canelo, projecting a supremely confident aura. This feels like an incredibly tough assignment for Billy Joe, but it is an intriguing contest.
Is Tyson Fury playing mind games, or is everything not as rosy in the Fury-Joshua megafight garden as we’ve been led to believe? Despite everybody else in both promotional camps saying that a deal is inching ever closer for the undisputed Heavyweight showdown with Anthony Joshua, Fury himself has told ESPN that they are "no further along than they were a year ago" and the fact that he ended up not having a warm up fight in December was “just a big mess-up”. Fury does at least have a point when he said in the interview that not fighting since last February is far from ideal preparation for a contest of this magnitude, with Joshua’s last bout a 9th round stoppage of Kubrat Pulev in December last year. Given that Bob Arum, Fury’s promoter, has been on the record multiple times saying that a deal is nearly completed, and that Fury himself says that the bout has “got to happen sooner or later” in the same ESPN interview, it looks to just be an early build-up salvo. Could the burgeoning public war of words between Eddie Hearn and Bob Arum in the wake of the Lopez-Cambosos purse bid brouhaha cause further delays though? We shall see.
Matchroom Boxing’s second UK show of the year on February 20th was another cracker, with yet more bubble trouble for British names at Wembley Arena. Though having only had 11 prior fights, Josh Kelly looked every bit a superstar-in-waiting for the first three-or-so rounds of the main event, a long-delayed clash with David Avanesyan for the EBU Welterweight title. As the fight went on though, Kelly tired and the predictions of the Russian champion’s team proved spot on - Avanesyan’s relentless come forward style proved too much for PBK and his corner pulled him out in the sixth round. His trainer Adam Booth has a history of blooding his top prospects early against tough veterans - David Haye was stopped by 40-year-old Carl ‘The Cat’ Thompson in just his 11th fight back in 2004, and he still went on to have a very successful run - so it will be fascinating to see how Kelly recovers from this setback.
Also on February 20th, and speaking of bubbles, a star was born in Top Rank’s MGM Grand hub when Oscar Valdez turned in a career-defining performance to upset Miguel Berchelt via stunning KO to capture the WBC Super Lightweight title. The performance of the year so far, Valdez had become a bigger underdog as the fight drew closer, with an increasing number of pundits opting for Berchelt’s apparent advantage in power as being the deciding factor in what was supposed to be an all-out war. It proved to be a one-sided beat down. Coach Eddy Reynoso’s game plan and Valdez’s execution made a mockery of the pre-fight predictions as Oscar swept pretty much every round and dropped Berchelt twice before the BRUTAL finish in the final second of the 10th. The opportunities are now endless for Valdez, not just at Super Feather but also in the blockbuster lightweight division above in the years to come. For Reynoso this is yet another success story to come out of Team Canelo, and he already seems locked in for trainer of the year after just two months.
THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of events worth looking out for on the boxing calendar…
March 13th, 2021
Juan Francisco Estrada vs Roman Gonzalez II/Promoter: Matchroom/TV: DAZN (UK and US)
Once absolutely at the vanguard of the sport, Roman ‘Chocolotito’ Gonzalez was an underground boxing hero for years before being positioned prominently on Golovkin undercards in the US took his skills more mainstream. It is a shame that such a supreme boxer wasn’t seen consistently by the largest possible audience in his true prime years, winning world titles in four weight divisions and retaining a record of 46-0 before suffering back-to-back losses to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in 2017. He has bounced back strong though and takes the WBC Super Flyweight title in to this long-awaited clash with Estrada, a rematch of a fight which originally took place way back in 2012, when Estrada was just 22. Estrada now carries the WBC and The Ring Super Flyweight titles, and has grown to become the divsion’s top seed. Eddie Hearn (who does seem to promote everything these days) has said “this is going to be a special fight”, and in this instance that isn’t just hyperbole.
March 20th, 2021
Lawrence Okolie vs Krzysztof Glowacki/Promoter: Matchroom/TV: Sky Sports (UK); DAZN (US)
A rare chance for a bit of British positivity in the Wembley bubble following the recent high profile defeats, with Lawrence Okolie taking on experienced Glowacki for the vacant WBO Cruiserweight crown. Glowacki actually lost this same title in his last fight, a farcical three rounds of chaos with Maris Briedis during the Cruiserweight World Boxing Super Series in 2019. Although this is far from an easy fight given the pedigree of veteran Glowacki overall, Okolie goes in to this fight as a clear favourite in light of the improvements he has made with trainer Shane McGuigan since linking up in 2019.
March 27th, 2021
Dillian Whyte vs Alexander Povetkin II/Promoter: Matchroom/TV: Sky Sports Box Office (UK); DAZN (US)
Rematch of one of the more memorable fights of 2020, as Dillian Whyte attempts to get his career back on track after the surprise knockout defeat last year. Whyte still a huge favourite - 3/10 on with some bookmakers - and he SHOULD be able to box on the outside and win clearly, but Povetkin is an outstanding finisher so this one is interestingly poised. The event is now happening in Gibraltar and weeks later than originally planned, adding an extra bizarre element to the whole thing. Intriguing but not thrilling undercard, especially as this will be offered as a pay-per-view in the UK, includes promising 10-0 British heavyweight Fabio Wardley taking on previous AJ and Wilder victim Eric Molina in a 10 round step-up fight, with the chief support fight for the card apparently still to be announced.
Willy Hutchinson vs Lennox Clarke/Promoter: Frank Warren/TV: BT Sport (UK); ESPN+ (US)
The second part of a back to back two-night swing from Frank Warren featuring a host of young talent. Althoug Warren’s declaration of him as the new Joe Calzaghe might be just a tad premature, Willy Hutchinson is a very exciting prospect, fighting here against Lennox Clarke for the British and Commonwealth Super Middleweight titles. Scotland’s only ever gold medal winner at the World Youth Championship, 22-year-old Hutchinson is one of Britain’s brightest boxing hopes. Clarke has more pro experience, with his only defeat a split decision loss against Lerrone Richards in 2019 for the same belts they fight for here. Richards subsequently relinquished the British and Commonwealth titles and signed for Matchroom, whilst Hutchinson was waiting in the wings as number one contender, with Clarke then being re-added in to the picture for the vacant straps. So a slightly convoluted way to get here, but this is still an interesting match up, with Hutchinson expected to shine - it’s just a shame it’s now set to be on the same night as Whyte-Povetkin II.