By Per Ale Persson

The European Boxing Union, the EBU, held its annual General Meeting this past weekend in Brussels. Finland´s by now former EBU lightweight champion Edis Tatli was named Fighter of the Year and Tatli also received a special award for making three successful defences. Promoter of the year was MK Events headed by Malamine Kone and the Fight of the Year award went to Cedric Vitu vs Ruben Varon.

The EBU havs always been closed to the WBC and its President Mauricio Sulaiman was on hand. The matters of doping and fake fights was brought up and while the EBU is only a championship organisation and not a governing body, its members was asked to pay extra attention to these matters. Unfortunately it´s a fact that some Federations have very close ties to some promoters and/or agents - and in some cases the Federation is similar to a leading promoter in a certain countries.

The BDB in Germany, FLP in Luxenbourg LPBF in Latvia and the BPBF in Bosnia-Hercegovina went from provisional members to full membership (again) while Federations from Norway and Lithuania went the other way.

Heavyweights in action:

Robert Helenius saw months of training and sparring go up in smoke when the Dereck Chisora fight set for May 27 in Helsinki was cancelled. However, he and his team decided to stay in training and look for fights elsewhere. Helenius will now keep busy with a fight in Estonia June 17 and take on Brit Ian Lewison (12-3-1).

Carlos Takam, the IBF I/C champ, stays busy with a fight June 17 in Italy against Croatian veteran Ivica Bacurin. Takam´s hopes for a fight for the vacant IBF title against Kubrat Pulev apparently went up in smoke when the IBF gave the green light for Anthony Joshua vs Wladimir Klitschko II.

Danish prospect Pierre Madsen, 7-0, takes on Slovakian David Vyletel, 5-2, in Aarhus June 27 on the next edition of Danish Fight Night. Madsen is trained by veteran heavyweight Sherman Williams in Copenhagen.

Adrian Granat, who was knocked out in by Aleksander Dimitrenko in March in his hometown Malmoe, will return in August in Hamburg and then have another fight September 30 also in Hamburg. If all goes well Adrian will return to Malmoe (Sweden) in December.