The WBC’s ‘Franchise’ Sticker and More Judges Add to Boxing’s Numbers Glut

The WBC’s ‘Franchise’ Sticker and More Judges Add to Boxing’s Numbers Glut

My late Cuban mother-in-law said a lot of things in her thick accent that might have been somewhat lost in translation, one of her more memorable observations being that “too much of a good thing can turn you crooked.”

The lady whose five children and those who wed their way into the family all knew as Mimi wasn’t referring to boxing in that instance, but she might as well have been. If the sweet science were a calculator, the “addition” key would be nearly worn out and there would be no corresponding “subtraction” key. Just when fight fans think they have a handle on what passes for normal nowadays, new concepts – additions, of course – are tossed out like beads from a Mardi Gras float.

Which is not to say that two more innovations (one already implemented, the other likely to be) from the WBC and its tinkering president, Mauricio Sulaiman, are unnecessary or extraneous. In fact, Mauricio, during a Zoom teleconference with a select few members of the U.S. media on Monday, insisted that in his heart of hearts he is basically a traditionalist as are many hidebound fans of the sport. It’s just that, well, the curmudgeons among us who cling to the hope that someday the fight game will whittle itself back down into eight standard weight classes, from its currently bloated 17, with a universally recognized champion in each are as likely to get that as an international dictum requiring everyone to trade in their automobiles for horse-drawn buggies.

“There is resistance to change. That’s human nature,” Sulaiman said, although the past few decades in which the business and structure of boxing have been radically altered would seem to suggest otherwise. “We like to do things customarily. In boxing, there is a big, big love for the classic, for the past, for the legendary. To implement change is very complicated.”

In an effort to un-complicate matters, the Mexico City-based WBC has designated two of its most worthy champions, Vasiliy Lomachenko and Canelo Alvarez, as “franchise” titlists, with Lomachenko (14-1, 10 KOs) defending his “new and improved” lightweight status from that sanctioning body, as well as his WBA “super” and WBO straps, against IBF 135-pound ruler Teofimo Lopez (15-0, 12 KOs) Saturday night in the MGM “Bubble” in Las Vegas. Despite being arguably the most-anticipated fight of 2020, the action will be carried via regular ESPN, a happy fact to be appreciated by fight fans of all persuasions.

Lomachenko-Lopez will be judged, if in fact the outcome goes to the scorecards, by three judges, as usual. But the days of three-person panels deciding who or who doesn’t win fights on points might also soon become a relic from the past, if Sulaiman’s vision of the future gains traction.

“From what I have seen through the remote scoring (judges not at ringside) during this pandemic, I am so convinced that the more judges that score a fight, the possibility of a bad decision goes to the minimum,” said Sulaiman, who envisions a day when five or even seven judges – some at ringside, others seeing the same thing on TV and not from different angles – will eliminate or at least greatly reduce the sort of scoring controversies that have always made what seemed obvious to many not so much to the chosen few with pencils.

“We are in the process of having five judges for a few fights in the jurisdictions where we allow this to happen,” Sulaiman said. “We have done fights with judges on site, combined with remote judges. That has been a tremendous success. I don’t know how easy or how fast this can be implemented, but I know there are jurisdictions (certain state boxing commissions) that simply won’t allow it.”

Judges also will experiment with scoring 10-9 rounds as “close,” “moderate,” “decisive” or “extreme,” the last likely resulting in a 10-8 tally even without a knockdown.

“If you have a judge going all over the place in (scoring) a fight, then you talk to him and you train him,” Sulaiman continued.

If the future scoring of fights sounds more complicated, it probably will be. But like the man said, change can be difficult to implement and accept. New stuff takes getting used to.

Back to the franchise designation, which Sulaiman insisted will be conferred only upon special fighters who reveal themselves to be a cut or two above mere alphabet place-holders. Although Devin Haney (24-0, 15 KOs) is also a WBC lightweight champ, the difference between he and Lomachenko might be akin to levels of royalty, with the Ukrainian southpaw being the king of the division and the Las Vegas resident by way of his native San Francisco more like a prince.

“I understand that there is resistance and uncertainty, but I feel very good about the franchise designation because it will be a concept that applies to only a very few,” Sulaiman explained.

“The winner of this fight will be recognized as the franchise champion of the WBC. I understand that any new thing, any new rule or program, always creates confusion. But Lomachenko is in fact a champion with special attributes. He does not have to face the mandatories that a new champion has to face when he wins a vacant title.”

Where things get more complicated, not simpler, will be when the WBC assumes a loftier-than-thou stance for its franchise stalwarts in unification bouts with champions from the other three world sanctioning bodies. If fairly recent boxing history has taught us anything, it is that the alphabet groups will strip unified champions, as if he were a scantily clad dancer in a gentleman’s cabaret, if they don’t fulfill a particular outfit’s mandatory within a specified time frame.

“The mandatory contender was introduced by the WBC many, many years ago, when (Jose) Napoles and a few other fighters had to wait five or six years to get a title opportunity,” Sulaiman noted. “There was no rule mandating a champion to fight any boxer. (The establishment) of mandatories is a great rule, and very fair. But the rule sometimes has worked contrary to its creation. It has been abused.

“The fact is that, having so many championships, the level of quality of mandatory challengers in certain divisions is very much diluted. Sometimes you have mandatory contenders that you really could doubt that they are the best challengers in the division.

“This situation of fighters belonging to different promoters or networks has always existed. It does complicate matters. For (Mike) Tyson to wait so long to fight Lennox Lewis took many years. For Manny to fight Floyd took many years.”

The establishment of franchise fighters in certain divisions, Sulaiman said, is not designed for that person to run away from a mandatory, but to run to a big fight that people want to see.

Now, getting the other organizations to go along with Sulaiman’s plot to remake boxing is the sticking point. That, too, has been a problem that never seems to go away. Every alphabet president wants his group to lead the parade, not just tagging along.

“I don’t want to talk about other organizations. We’re talking about the WBC,” said Sulaiman, who indicated he had been in contact with the IBF’s Daryl Peoples and the WBO’s Paco Valcarcel (no mention of the WBA’s Gilberto Mendoza) regarding a standardization of ratings. “We have had ideas and we have put them forth. There have been intentions to put in a system where the organizations work together. But in the end, each organization has its own agenda, its own rules, its own ideas.”

And the pile of those rules and ideas just keeps getting larger and larger.

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