[kenyan_cheena]

The New York Age

THURSDAY, 9 MARCH, 2006

"WE SHOULD BE WORRIED,"
SAYS WBA PRESIDENT

Story by James Reynolds

Speaking yesterday from his organisation's Venezuelan head office World Boxing Association President Pedro Vielma made the surprising admission that the sport's established sanctioning bodies "should be worried" by the threat that James Molk's International Boxing League poses to their control of it. Molk's group has made fantastic progress since he introduced it to the world just under two months ago with the man himself saying last Monday that they've "already signed close to 150 fighters".

"When Mr. Molk made his speech back in January I was sceptical," Vielma said. "He made all these proclamations, talking tough and saying that his league would be a "financial powerhouse" and built on "integrity". It sounded like a lot of big words with nothing to back them up. But I've heard rumours about who he's managed to get involved in his organisation and what their plans are and if they are true then we have to take him very seriously."

The WBA is the oldest of boxing's four major organisations and first came into being as the National Boxing Association in 1921 before changing it's name in '62 to reflect the global reach of the sport. Vielma has ruled it unopposed as president since 1991 and he conceeded yesterday that some of the points Molk made back in January had "a ring of truth to them" and that "certain incidents in the past could have been handled differently." That comment seemed to be an agreement on his part that some of the more controversial actions taken by the sport's sanctioning bodies have damaged the public's perception of boxing and led to today's climate of disinterest in it. Vielma did try to put a positive spin on the sport's current reality, claiming that the upcoming 18 March lightweight unification bout between the Dominican Republic's WBA champion Francisco Ortiz and Mexican WBC champion Patricio Marquez will very likely be the fight of the year.

There have been situations that have made each of the four organisations hang their heads in shame and for the WBA the low point was probably the period during the 1980s when it came under the strong influence of the late promoter Freddie Hutchinson. His sway over the organisation was so absolute that other promoters had to resort to paying bribes to its officials just to get their fighters ranked. It must be said that Vielma's reign has been free of such corruption although he has rubber-stamped his fair share of inconsistent, perplexing and incompetent decisions.

However, compared to the nuthouse that is the current day International Boxing Federation the WBA is a model business. The IBF is facing two embarassing situations that are both the making of its often-lampooned president Michael Jacobs. The first one relates to Mexican featherweight Gilberto Vasquez. Last September he was victorious in an official world title eliminator, earning a shot at Puerto Rican world champion Jose Molina. The following month Molina relinquished the belt and moved up to the junior-lightweight division. Instead of allowing Vasquez to contest for the vacant title the federation decided that two fighters promoted by Jacobs' close friend Robert Tattaglia would do so.

An angry Vasquez then announced that he planned to sue the IBF for breach of contract if he did not receive the title shot he'd earned, to which they replied with an appeasing offer where he would challenge the winner of the title fight in their first defense. Seeing this as a further sign of disrespect Vasquez hired a lawyer and declared that he would be going ahead with legal action. To date the situation remains unresolved but it veered into dangerous territory recently when Vasquez revealed that he'd received death threats, intriguing news when one considers Tattaglia's rumoured links to organised crime in New Jersey, which is also where the IBF's head office is located.

The other mess that the federation has made for themselves involves current World Boxing Organisation heavyweight champion Terone Haynes. In recent months Haynes' manager/trainer Roy Jones has been pushing for a unification bout between his man and the current IBF champion, Germany's Marko Friedrich. Haynes captured the WBO belt from his fellow Florida native Ray Mercer in September 2004 and has already defended it on four occasions in the time since. By comparison, Friedrich has defended his title just once during that period, which was almost twelve months ago. He pulled out of a planned defense with Russia's Igor Berezutskiy late last year, who the IBF somehow installed as a mandatory challenger despite him having beaten no one currently ranked in their top ten.

Their clash has yet to be re-scheduled and what makes the incident even more farcical is Jacobs' recent bizarre words when he claimed that because Haynes had only fought twenty-one times in his pro career he was not worthy of challenging for the IBF's belt, this despite the fact that their current bantamweight champion Owen Moran won the title in his sixteenth fight. The WBO have not helped the situation either by stating they'd prefer Haynes to fight their own mandatory challenger. Roy Jones announced last week that if the situation is not resolved by the end of the month Haynes will be relinquishing the belt and signing with the IBL. The entire "Florida Alliance", as Jones' Pensacola-based team is sometimes known, would be going with him.

These two incidents with Vasquez and Haynes are only a pair of examples of why the majority of the sporting public is so down on boxing these days. It would seem that many of the sport's competitors are sick of the nonsense from the alphabet boys also, judging by the number of them who have already signed with the IBL. Last week's news that Canada's two-time Olympic gold medallist Sam Langford had become the latest high-profile fighter to do so will no doubt be a body blow to the World Boxing Council who were definitely grooming him towards a shot at the title in what is presently a shallow cruiserweight division. With Langford out of the picture the pool is almost empty. Molk's organisation has been very smart with their signings so far: most of them are young fighters who really are the future of this sport, such as the trio of Olympic champions who joined before Langford in Jack Johnson, Salvador Sanchez and Lennox Lewis.

And so, as Vielma said in relation to the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO's stance towards the IBL, "We should be worried."