By Tris Dixon
THE unsavoury aftermath of the anticipated UFC clash between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor has been called “horrible” by the head of the World Boxing Council.
Mauricio Sulaiman condemned what happened after McGregor tapped saying, “That was horrible. That was horrible. That was a chapter in sports that will always be seen. It has been seen in all other sports but it is why we need to take action and not just be observers.”
At last week’s WBC Convention, Sulaiman and members of the WBC called for a code of ethics to be installed in boxing after numerous pre-fight build-ups have threatened to spiral out of control.
Last week’s Fury-Wilder press tour came and went without a major incident, but Sulaiman admits that something needs to be done to prevent face-offs escalating while acknowledging that it will prove difficult to police.
“Yes, they are pushing it too far,” he said of the standards of building fights in the modern era.
“We just introduced at the Convention a code of ethics for boxers and their corners and it’s going to be distributed and it’s going to take effect, with 2018 being the cut point. This is a performance guide for fighters and their corners – behaviour – outside the ring, in press conferences, in the weigh-in, during the fight and after the fight. In this code of ethics there is a line, but it’s an invisible line," Sulaiman told BoxingScene.com.
"Where you go from acceptable to non-acceptable is very difficult [to assess]. There are different cultures. A word does not mean the same in Argentina as it does in Mexico. An offence is not the same in Japan as it is in China, or in the United States as it is in the United Kingdom. But we are completely concerned about what happens in these events.
"My father [Jose Sulaiman] was almost killed in an incident between Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis in a confrontation and that confrontation was organised by promoters and it got out of hand. Things can get out of hand very easily in the sport. There’s too much pressure and animosity, there’s lives at stake when you go to the ring and we have to gather together as boxing administrators and take action.”
