How the World Boxing Super Series Is Making Boxing Better

When Naoya Inoue meets Nonito Donaire in the bantamweight final of season two of the World Boxing Super Series on Thursday in Japan, the event’s organizers will for the third time have accomplished something truly grand in the world of professional boxing.

No, this wasn’t just the latest repackaging of that same tired concept that permeates every single boxing promotional outfit in the world. You know the one. It features a promoter talking big things about his best fighters only to consistently pit them against a who’s who of people those fighters should have no trouble beating.

They do it over and over and over again until something really big comes along, and even when that happens, it doesn’t mean we get to see something special.

But the World Boxing Super Series makes stars, and it’s a concept that could potentially turn boxing’s future toward something more like the best parts of other professional sports someday. It features tournaments where the best fight the best in order to crown the top fighter in the field.

If boxing had a playoff system like other professional sports, the World Boxing Super Series is what it would look like. Heck, that should probably be the goal. Let’s turn this thing into boxing’s playoff system.

The first season of the World Boxing Super Series featured tournaments in the cruiserweight and super middleweight divisions. Oleksandr Usyk defeated Murat Gassiev in July 2018 to become the very first fighter to win the Muhammad Ali Trophy, which is the award given to tournament winners.

More impressively, because all four major titleholders had agreed to enter the tournament, Uysk’s win over Gassiev made him just the third person ever to become undisputed cruiserweight champion (and first of the four-belt era), following Evander Holyfield (IBF, WBA, WBC) in 1988 and O’Neil Bell (IBF, WBA, WBC) in 2006.

Two months later, Callum Smith defeated George Groves in Saudi Arabia to win the super middleweight bracket along with the WBA title.

In both cases, the World Boxing Super Series served as a platform for relatively unknown fighters to prove themselves against elite competition on the world stage. The tournament also forced that growth to happen over a short amount of time.

There were no long waits after fights to find out who Usyk or Smith would face next. That was always dictated by the tournament, and in addition to being nice and timely, it was always a quality opponent.

Despite some reported issues on the business side of things that led to some fighters threatening to pull out of the tournament, no one actually ended up doing that so the second season of the World Boxing Super Series was also a success.

Last month, Josh Taylor defeated Regis Prograis to win the junior welterweight tournament. Taylor entered the bracket as a highly regarded prospect but left it being a unified world champion on top of the division.

This week, Inoue and Donaire have the chance to do something very similar. For Inoue, winning the bantamweight tournament would solidify the fighter as one of the best fighters in all of boxing. For Donaire, a win would bring the 36-year-old right back to where he was during his prime years.

Sometime later this year, Maris Briedis will face Yunier Dorticos in the cruiserweight tournament final. The winner of that bout will also become unified champion. While the cruiserweight division seems like the most ignored division over 135 pounds in all of boxing, the World Boxing Super Series has actually given huge opportunities to those 200-pound limit fighters most everyone ignores that otherwise would have gone unrealized.

I mean, how many cruiserweight bouts did you see before the World Boxing Super Series came along? And how many have you watched since?

There’s no doubt that both Taylor, the winner of Inoue-Donaire and winner of Briedes-Dorticos will be in much better positions than they were just two years ago before the tournaments started.

They’ll be the new Usyks and Callum Smiths. They’ll be the fighters who have actually done something great. They’ll be the champions people want to see do even more big things, and they’ll be the names everyone in boxing knows by heart.

So far, the World Boxing Super Series is a mountain, and at the top of that mountain, the winners wear crowns. There’s no denying how much better boxing has been since it’s come along.

The fighters who have hoisted the Muhammad Ali Trophy have accomplished much more than they could have using the one-fight-at-a-time approach that permeates the rest of the sport.

Those who are about to do it are likely to experience the same.

In a boxing world gone mad with little ideas and constant regurgitations from the same tired playbook, the World Boxing Super Series is giving fighters a real chance to change their lives. That’s never really been all that common in the sport, so let’s hope nothing comes along to derail it.

But even if it does, there’s nothing proprietary about tournaments like this that other promoters couldn’t duplicate on their own. Heck, the World Boxing Super Series was at least partially inspired by the Super Six World Boxing Classic that solidified Andre Ward’s stardom eight years ago after he won its 168-pound tournament.

Tournaments make boxing better. That’s how the World Boxing Super Series is making the sport better, and it’s time for others to embrace the concept, too.

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