How does scheduling for boxing fights in major organizations work?

boxing
AN14 asked:


By major organizations, I'm talking about International Boxing Organization, World Boxing Organization, World Boxing Association, etc.

Can a fighter challenge another fighter for an official match or are all matches already properly scheduled?

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Comments (2)

  1. americasfavoritethug says June 21, 2011 at 12:34 PM

    champions who pay sanctioning fees to compete for the belt have mandatory challenger who also pay the fee
    your manager is who pretty much takes the direction as far as how you pursue fights.
    even a mandatory challenge isnt mandatory for a champ because the champ can move to other weight classes and or if their is a must see fight sometimes they will allow the mandatory challenger bout to be postponed but its totally up to the sanctioning organization how lenient they want to be.. sergio martinez got strip of his belt recently cause he wants a different fight and hes not a punk for that.. he is a star now and he deserves big fights..

  2. Mark-Andrew M 2 says June 22, 2011 at 8:23 PM

    There are certain fights that are mandatory for a champion to take because of mandatory challengers in which a fighter has won title eliminators to earn a shot at the title. Not ALL championship fights are mandatories though- sometimes a fighter will opt to make an optional defense when he does not have to make a mandatory defense. A champion can defend against any fighter who is ranked in the top 25 of that particular sanctioning body but the sanctioning bodies can sometimes make exceptions for unification bouts.

    The only time that the sanctioning bodies schedule matchups is when a champion must make a mandatory defense and the promoters cannot come to an agreement as to where the fight should be held or what the purse split should be- in those cases, the sanctioning body will call a purse bid in which the the promoter with the highest bid will determine where the fight is to be held and in most cases, it is customary that the champion receive 75 percent of the purse while the challenger receives 25 and in cases where the title is vacant, both fighters will receive 50 percent although there can be exceptions to these rules. In cases where a fighter moves up or down in weight to challenge for a title but already owns a title in another weight class, the fighter will have a set amount of time to determine which title he wants to keep.

    An example of a non-scheduled bout would be the Foreman-Cotto bout- Foreman is making an optional defense of his junior middleweight title because Cotto is not his mandatory challenger but since Foreman's mandatory defense is not due for a few months, he has the opportunity to take on Cotto in a big opportunity for him. An example of a mandatory would be the 2 fights in Germany this Saturday- Sebastian Sylvester is making a mandatory defense of his middleweight title against Roman Karmazin and Steve Cunningham is fighting Troy Ross for a vacant cruiserweight title. If Sylvester didn't want to face Karmazin, he would have been stripped of his title and Karmazin would have faced the number 2 contender according to that sanctioning body for the vacant title.

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