[kenyan_cheena]

MOLK MAKES SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT ON IBL SCHEDULING

Tuesday 7 May 2002

Speaking at a specially arranged news conference in Johannesburg, where he is overseeing the International Boxing League's South African selection trials, IBL Chief Director James Molk has made an announcement concerning the league's scheduling, an announcement that has created an immediate difference between the way the HBF and IBL will run their Championship tournaments.

"As you are aware, the Heavyweight Boxing Federation has a system with their tournaments where all the competitors have been seeded according to an estimate of their talent," said Molk. "These seedings allow for the top four seeds in each of their groups to avoid fighting each other early in the tournament. Just last night, the federation held a fight card where the top three seeds in the World Championship group all improved their records to 4-0. They have not had to fight each other yet because of the HBF's scheduling policy. They have "protected" - I guess that's the best word to use - the top seeds, allowing them to start their careers in bouts against fighters that they should realistically defeat."

Molk paused to take a sip of water before continuing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a policy that the International Boxing League will not be implementing," said Molk. "We will not be seeding the fighters in our World Championship qualifying tournaments and as a consequence of this, it will be entirely possible that the two fighters who are considered to be the best in each regional group could fight each other in their debut bout!"

This brought an astonished commotion from the gathered media, several journalists all trying at once to get questions in. Molk ignored their pleas and continued.

"Of course, anybody who knows anything about scheduling sporting events knows that planning is involved. What we will be doing is allocating each fighter in each group a random number from one to twelve. We have a schedule of matchups for each of the eleven fight cards for the regional qualifiers, where for example fighter number one fights number two, three fights four, five fights six, and so on. One of these eleven schedules will be picked at random for each fight card in each regional group in all five of our weight divisions, so the number allocated to each fighter will determine who he fights in each series of the tournament. As an example, I can reveal that both Salvador Sanchez and Vicente Saldivar will be in our Mexico regional group for the Featherweight division qualifiers. Let's just speculate that Sanchez is allocated number five and Saldivar number nine. If the first fight card schedule selected features the matchup between number five and number nine, these two men, who as you would probably know share a mutual hatred of each other, would be fighting each other in their debut bout! This is the type of thing that could not have happened with the HBF's scheduling. Of course, it's also entirely possible that they won't fight each other until their eleventh bout, or their tenth or sixth. The answer will not be known until the schedules are revealed. That is something that will be done five weeks prior to each fight card. This means that the International Boxing League's contestants will not be able to simply look at their schedule and know that they have a number of fights ahead of them that they are confident of winning. Oh, no. They will have to wait to see who they will go up against. I believe that this scheduling policy will cause a lot of excitement amongst the boxing following public also, in addition to bringing in the definite possibility of some classic, exciting, World Championship calibre matchups in the early stages of our qualifying tournaments."

With that, and despite the protestations of the gathered media, Molk excused himself, stating that it was now time for him to return to the Carnival City Big Top Arena for the commencement of the second day of the South African selection trials...