Comments Thread For: Mikey Garcia Still on Track For January Bout, Hopes it's Linares

[landotter]

This WBC WBA IBF account is handled by three longtime boxingscene posters. One of us speaks frequently to the president of the WBC, one of us speaks frequently to the president of the WBA and one of us speaks frequently to the president of the IBF. Since so many of our posts involve sanctioning body rules and politics, we joined forces a few months ago to operate one single account while ditching our previous accounts.




And any hardcore boxing fan would and should pay for both. All we're suggesting is that if you stack up the live fights from both Showtime and HBO in 2017, and had to pick just one service to have subscribed to, Showtime should get the nod. They had the stronger year for live boxing.

First off, I agree with paying for both. Obviously, since I do. HBO has had a bad couple of years, but the superfly card and their stable of MW's make me think they are getting away from stables of fighters (like ESPN having Top Rank's fights exclusively and Golden Boy promotional fights particularly on ESPN Deportes) and getting into fighters and weight classes. I see a nice rebound coming from them. But Showtime is for real, and I still see the best free fights on Showtime over HBO for the next year.

Secondly, I love that there is an account on here that can shed some light on the often mystifying decisions from the sanctioning bodies. I often say I could care less about belts anymore due to the politics that seem to keep unifications and the best fights from happening or the often headache inducing decisions they make as far as mandatories (The WBC's granting of Bermane Stiverne the #1 contender status is the most obvious recent example of this, but not the only one).

I will be following your account's posts.

[N/A]

I love that there is an account on here that can shed some light on the often mystifying decisions from the sanctioning bodies. I often say I could care less about belts anymore due to the politics that seem to keep unifications and the best fights from happening or the often headache inducing decisions they make as far as mandatories (The WBC's granting of Bermane Stiverne the #1 contender status is the most obvious recent example of this, but not the only one).

We are often accused of "defending" the sanctioning bodies, but we are not here to defend anything. We are here to explain why some decisions are made because the media often does a horrible job of reporting what is really going on.

Some fans say the belts should just be ignored and that's understandable. Personally, we would prefer for all of the sanctioning bodies to go out of business. It's a ridiculous system that is beyond broken. But this is what the promoters and networks prefer, so this is the system we have.

As for Stiverne, a lot of fans cry corruption over him receiving a title shot, but there really wasn't anything corrupt about it. Stiverne was the champion. He lost by decision. So he became the #5 contender after losing. Fair enough. A dethroned champion who lost by decision probably deserves to fall to right around #5.

His promoter, Don King, is a genius at maneuvering fighters through the rankings. With Don's business on its last legs, he knew the best chance at a title shot was just to sit and wait. When Stiverne fell to #5 after losing to Deontay, the four fighters above him were:

#1 Povetkin
#2 Perez
#3 Fury
#4 Glazkov

In the middle of 2015, Povetkin & Perez fought in a final eliminator to determine the mandatory for 2016 (Wilder was the previous mandatory and won the title in early 2015). Povetkin won, which bounced Perez down the rankings.

So now instead of four fighters being ahead of Stiverne, now only three were. Povetkin, Fury and Glazkov.

Fury ended up becoming the WBO mandatory and fought for and won the WBO title, which removes him from the WBC rankings.

Glazkov ended up becoming the IBF mandatory and fought for and lost the IBF title. So he's out of the way.


Stiverne sneaks in the Rossy fight in late 2015 so that he's technically "active" and eligible to remain ranked. Don King understanding the system and working it to his advantage.


So now everybody is out of the way except Povetkin. Nothing corrupt has occurred. The former champion is simply biding his time, waiting for others to lose or pursue paths with other organizations. He's technically been active with the Rossy win.


Had Povetkin not flunked his test and actually received his title shot in the middle of 2016, Stiverne would have been ordered to face Pulev later in 2016 to determine the 2017 mandatory.

However, Povetkin flunks his test, lawyers up, and is given a second chance when Wilder ends up getting hurt. With Wilder out of the picture for a while, Povetkin & Stiverne are ordered to fight for the interim title, with the winner facing Wilder in early 2017.

Povetkin flunks his test again, and Stiverne, who had been promised a shot at the interim title, now had nothing. He'd paid for a full training camp, flew to Russia and had his fight canceled 20 hours before bell time.

The WBC wanted to order Stiverne to fight the next leading contender in a final eliminator as they saw no point now in crowning an interim champion as Wilder would almost be ready by the time another fight could be scheduled.

Don King threatened to sue and made the argument that Stiverne had been screwed out of the interim title because Povetkin cheated and it wasn't fair to make him go fight an eliminator when there now hadn't been a mandatory defense in two years.

To avoid litigation, and with the mandatory long overdue, Stiverne was installed as the mandatory, with the logic being that it wasn't his fault that Povetkin cheated twice, and that essentially Stiverne had won the position by forfeit.


Now, we all know Stiverne likely would have lost to Povetkin. We all know Don King's strategy of sitting fighters for years to get a title shot often backfires because they're so rusty by the time they get the title shot.


BUT, nothing unscrupulous occurred here. It was simply an unfortunate set of circumstances caused by Povetkin repeatedly cheating. He had not doped (TWICE), Wilder would have fought Povetkin, Stiverne would have fought Pulev to determine the 2017 mandatory, the champion would have defended against the mandatory months ago, we'd be crowning a new mandatory for next year now, etc.

So Povetkin really messed up everything for everybody.

[trouser python]

What do you mean WE? Who's WE?
What, you got a mouse in your pocket??
And okay I get what your saying. The last couple of years showtime has spent more money on Boxing and they do have more free fights on their network.
I have both Showtime and HBO cause I can't miss any fights. I pretty much watch all fights. But HBO has had a couple of good cards this year in the lower weight divisions.
So for me it's hard to pick one network over the other so I just pay for both.

**** dude those couple of lines had me laughing so hard haha