WBC must set aside financial greed and strip Mayweather of his title
JEFF POWELL ANNO DOMINI Two Thousand and Twelve dawns with a shadow cast over boxing by, of all people, the most prestigious of the world championship sanctioning bodies.
The hard old game has enough detractors without the president of the WBC, José Sulaiman, inferring that Floyd Mayweather’s battering of the mother of his children is not a serious enough crime to warrant him being stripped of his welterweight title.
WBC regulations require the removal of their belt from a convicted felon, which Floyd Jnr became when he agreed a plea bargain under which he begins a three-month spell in prison starting today.
Sulaiman then described Mayweather’s offence as “not a big crime”, to the outrage of not only women’s activists but right-minded citizens the world over.
As the furore grew, Sulaiman, as a Mexican native Spanish speaker, tried to excuse himself by claiming clumsiness with the English language and citing his support of women’s rights.
Yet, he failed to trigger the stripping of Mayweather – agreeing only to review the situation this month while committing the WBC to a seemingly, unqualified support of fighters.
The suspicion has to be that the WBC are more concerned with the significant sanctioning fees they receive from fights involving Mayweather, the highest revenue generator on pay-per-view television in America.
One high-profile Latin American boxer, Argentina’s Sergio Martinez, has registered his personal protest by dumping the WBC Diamond belt, a virtually meaningless inven- tion, conveniently designed to disguise the fact that the No 1 middleweight on the planet is not the world champion of that organisation.
The more significant Ring magazine world middleweight belt will be on the line when Martinez defends against Birmingham’s Matthew Macklin in New York’s Madison Square Garden on March 17.
Martinez is also angered by the WBC’S failure to enforce his mandatory challenge to official WBC champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr.
However, the future risk to his career if he is cold-shouldered by that organisation validates his stand as one of principle. Quite rightly, it is one which is attracting massive public support, to the mounting embarrassment of the WBC.
Mayweather is tuned into the gangsta rap culture, but there is nothing macho about hitting women, least of all when it is done by a prize-fighter. DO THE CRIME, SERVE THE TIME: Floyd Mayweather Jnr will start his 90-day imprisonment today.
Furthermore, in most civilised countries, Britain included, a boxer’s fists are deemed to be deadly weapons and their use against civilians outside the ring considered a serious assault.
Mayweather escaped several years in prison by accepting his 90 days behind bars.
Martinez v Macklin is one of several exciting events in the offing in 2012, despite Mayweather’s sentence delaying his super-fight with Manny Pacquiao once again and even though there were a rash of world title defeats for British boxers in the year just ended.
Dereck Chisora gets a crack at Vitali Klitschko’s world heavyweight title on February 18, perhaps with David Haye following his fellow Londoner to a football ground in Germany in the northern hemisphere mid-summer.
David Price will push himself into that reckoning, assuming he defeats John Mcdermott in a final British title eliminator on January 21.
Boxnation, Frank Warren’s new dedicated TV channel, is given a boost not only by broadcasting Klitschko v Chisora but in finding itself the only network screening the fights of British world champions.
Nathan Cleverly goes into a homecoming defence of his light-heavyweight title in Cardiff on February 25 hoping to return to Wales for a huge championship unification fight against veteran American legend Bernard Hopkins in the Millennium Stadium.
Ricky Burns defends his lightweight title in Scotland in March.
Carl Froch and Amir Khan, no matter what the outcome of his appeal against the controversial defeat to Lamont Peterson, will be back seeking to regain their world titles this year. Internationally, Froch’s conqueror, André Ward, will be striving to rise towards pound-for-pound greatness, while the Pacman will resist that by strutting his stuff, with or without Mayweather.
Which turns this ring full circle. If boxing is to maximise all these gifts and continue its climb from crisis to renaissance, it must conduct its business in a manner so civilised that it dignifies the violence in the ring.
If not, the threat from the abolitionists, particularly among the opportunist politicians in the US senate, will become ever greater.
It is essential that the WBC set aside financial greed and any celebrity preference for Mayweather.
It is their duty to abide by their own rules, strip Mayweather and thereby make it clear beyond any doubt that boxing respects the rule of law, the dignity of man and the protection of women.
Once Mayweather comes out of the slammer he should be free to resume his career and be reinstated as high in the rankings as the WBC and all the other alphabet bodies see fit. As should any culprit in any walk of live once he has served his time.
Preferably, he will then train himself towards that poundfor-pound showdown with Pacquaio. Meanwhile, he has forfeited his right to be a champion. – Daily Mail