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Philippines, 14 Mar 2026 |
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SNIPS AND SNIPES 12 October 2022: Conor Benn Drug Testing Fiasco and Disagreements Among Boxing Bodies By Eric Armit PhilBoxing.com Thu, 13 Oct 2022  conor Benn. Boxing is the walking wonder of sport. What other sport could shoot itself in the foot so often and still be able to stumble from farce to farce. The recent postponement of the Chris Eubank Jr vs. Conor Benn fight is a typical example of this. The debate evolved to be not so much about whether Benn gave a positive test or not but about who did the testing! With no overriding world body each sanctioning body and national body can decide who to utilise for testing and there is no obligation for any of those organisations to accept the findings of another test house. In theory a positive test should be a positive test full stop but with the laissez faire approach to testing in the boxing industry and with no overarching body then there are always going to be disputes of this nature. To give a very small example of the difficulty of getting the four major sanctioning bodies to agree to anything you just have to consider the attempt made by Mauricio Sulaiman to get some areas of commonality. He invited the IBF, WBA and WBO to a meeting to discuss this. The WBO refused to attend, the IBF came but agreed to nothing and the only agreement was between the WBC and WBA to use the same name for the various divisions. That was too good to last. The WBC now have a strawweight division which the IBF and WBO call the mini flyweight and the WBA call minimum. The new 102lbs for female boxers is the Atomweight for the WBC and WBO but it is the WBA light minimum division and the IBF Junior mini. If they can’t even agree on such a simple thing as the designation of a weight division what chance is there of any commonality of approach to such a serious subject as drug testing? We also came close to losing another fight when a dispute over gloves threatened to see the IBO title fight between Sam Eggington and Dennis Hogan fall apart at the last minute. Eggington chose to use Hogan’s second pair of gloves instead of his own first pair because they were the same colour as his trunks. Hogan’s team protested this as they had not been informed of Eggington’s decision. It was eventually smoothed out but it is hard to figure out why Eggington wearing Hogan’s second pair of gloves gave him any advantage. What a stupid reason for nearly having such a good fight go down the drain. Still on sanctioning bodies the WBA are almost becoming the good guys. They are making progress toward a single champion in each of the men’s divisions. They now have ten single title holders at cruiserweight, light heavyweight, super welterweight, super lightweight, super featherweight, super bantamweight, bantamweight, super flyweight, flyweight and light flyweight. They have ordered fights between Gennady Golovkin and Erislandy Lara at middleweight, Leo Santa Cruz and Leigh Wood at featherweight and Thammanoon Niyomtrong vs. Erick Rosa at minimumweight which if those fights come off will result in thirteen single title holders in those divisions. If the WBA follow through on this it may take them sometime to resolve the remaining four division. Olek Usyk vs. Daniel Dubois is not yet on the table and nor is Saul Alvarez vs. David Morrell at super middleweight- that looks a non-starter- and Errol Spence will be looking to unify all four titles at welterweight when he fights Terence Crawford and lightweight title holder Devin Haney has a return match against George Kambosos this coming weekend so won’t face secondary champion Gervonta Davis until 2013. The WBC meanwhile are going in the opposite direction adding two more “interim title holders” at the weekend in Sebastian Fundora and Carlos Adames. An interim title is not a real title its very designation of interim makes that clear. It is a temporary title until the holder fights and beats the real champion or the real champion reties or moves up a division. So, it is a temporary title and in future I will use that designation instead of interim. The International Boxing Association is like a bunch of lemmings heading for the cliff edge. They seem to think they can ignore the real possibility of boxing being banned from the Olympic Games for the foreseeable future. They seem to think they can ignore the warnings from the International Olympic Committee. They seem to think they can win in a showdown against the IOC. They are wrong in all cases. It is all well and good refusing to be “bullied” into dealing with the corruption and incompetence uncovered by recent investigations and again they are wrong. It won’t be the guys in the ties, suits and expense accounts of the IBA who will suffer it is boxing and those thousands of young boxers whose dream of an Olympic medal will be shattered. To illustrate how the Olympic ideal has driven boxers of today’s title holders Olek Usyk, Jai Opetaia, Lawrence Okolioe, Artur Beterbiev, Gennady Golovkin, Janibek Alimkhanuli, Errol Spence, Josh Tayor, Shakur Stevenson, Joe Cordina, Hector Garcia and Fernando Martinez all competed at the Olympic Games. Being excluded from the Olympic Games will not kill boxing of course but we will never really know the full extent of the harm it does because it is impossible to gauge how many young boys and girls would have been attracted to the sport by the lure of the Olympics. There will be the World Championships but those do not have anything like the profile of an Olympic Games competition. With the way those respective tournaments are structured it is probably harder to win a World Championship medal as without an Olympic type qualification the World Championships feature a much greater number of competitors and as a result more it requires more bouts to reach the medal stage. As an example, amongst those failing to get the medal stage at the 2011 World Championships were Oscar Valdez, Josh Taylor, Errol Spence Artur Beterbiev Naoya Inoue, Joseph Parker, Michael Conlan, Khalid Yafai, Jamal Herring, Jeff Horn and many others who are top professionals today. However, the World Championships are the remit of the IBA and there is no evidence they can be trusted. Could amateur boxing be going down the same path as professional boxing with splinter groups forming? Dissatisfaction with the WBA spawned the WBC, IBF and WBO! It is going to be strange when Juan Francisco Estrada and Roman Gonzalez clash on 4 December as there will be no valid title at stake. The IBF title is held by Fernando Martinez, the WBA by Joshua Franco and the WBO by Kazuto Ioka. The WBC ratings show Jesses Rodriguez as their champion with Estrada only having the cardboard “Franchise” title so either Rodriguez is the WBC champion or he is not and if he is then the WBC title is not on the line either. Another week-another name thrown out by Tyson Fury. It was Derek Chisora, then it was Anthony Joshua, then it was Mahmoud Charr now it seems to be back to Chisora again-although of course I have been putting this together for a few hours so it could have changed again. It stretches Fury’s credibility when he mentions Chisora and in particularly Charr. The PPV figures for Alvarez vs. Golovkin III were disappointing but the fight was justified as the results of the first two fights were close and controversial and both are very high-profile fighters. There is no reason to suppose that Fury vs. Chisora would fare any better or even as well-as Alvarez vs. Golovkin as Fury won the first by a wide margin on all three cards and won inside the distance in the second. Going from Joshua to Charr was the sublime to the ridiculous. Now 38 Charr has had just two fights in almost five years and less than five rounds of boxing in that period. Seems a very unlikely proposition but it is it significant that despite not having fought since May the WBC slipped Charr into their September ratings at No 19 which on the basis of only two fights against third rate opponents in almost five years is highly suspicious. Still on heavyweights the EBU have called for purse bids by 25 October for Alen Babic vs. Peter Kadiru for the vacant European title. Kadiru is 14-0 and currently No 16 with the EBU and Babic is 14-0 and currently No 14. If these positions seem low you have to remember that with Joe Joyce, Anthnoy Joshua, Robert Helenius, Dillian Whyte, Filip Hrgovic, Derek Chisora, Oto Wallin, Tony Yoka etc., and even with Fury, Usyk and Dubois not eligible, the heavyweight division is probably the toughest division in Europe. Of course, there is a big heavyweight fight coming up this weekend with Deontay Wilder returning to action against Robert Helenius in New York on Saturday just one week before his 37th birthday and one year since his second inside the distance loss to Tyson Fury. After his kayo defeat against Gerald Washington Helenius was being written off. He has come back into the pictures after two wins over Adam Kownacki but for me those fights said more about Kownacki than Helenius and I will be very surprised if he poses any threat to Wilder or goes the distance. Also at heavyweight Daniel Dubois looks likely to put his secondary WBA title on the line against South African Kevin Lerena on 20 November in an intriguing, quality match up match-up. Also on Saturday we have the return between Devin Haney and George Kambosos in Melbourne with the Maloney twins Jason and Andrew on the same show. In fact, Australians have never had it so good as after the big No Limits show last weekend on the same night as Haney Kambosos there is a great super lightweight clash on the same night in Brisbane between Liam Paro (22-0) and Brock Jarvis (20-0). I am no great lover* of exhibition bouts or those between boxers and Martial Arts proponents (* that is an example of traditional British level under-statement as I actually hate them) but I will make an exception in the case of Manny Pacquiao. The Filipino legend is arranging to take part in an exhibition match in South Korea with the proceeds going to the people of Ukraine. Good one Manny. Manny’s last fight was in August 2021. If he does not fight again, he will be eligible for the Hall of Fame ballot for the class of 2024 so book your tickets for Canastota now! About the Author  Born in Scotland, Eric Armit started working with Boxing News magazine in the UK in the late 1960’s initially doing records for their Boxing News Annual and compiling World, European and Commonwealth ratings for the magazine. He wrote his first feature article for Boxing News in 1973 and wrote a “World Scene” weekly column for the magazine from the late 1970’s until 2004. Armit wrote a monthly column for Boxing Digest in the USA and contributed pieces to magazines in Mexico, Italy, Australia, Spain, Argentina and other countries. Armit now writes a Weekly Report covering every major fight around the world and a bi-weekly Snips & Snipes column plus occasional general interest articles with these being taken up by boxing sites around the world. He was a member of the inaugural WBC Ratings Committee and a technical advisor to the EBU Ratings Committee and was consulted by John McCain’s research team when they were drafting the Ali Act. He is a Director and former Chairman of the Commonwealth Boxing Council. Armit has been nominated to the International Boxing Hall of Fame the past two years (2019 and 2020) to which he said, “Being on the list is an unbelievably huge honour.” Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eric Armit.  |
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