South Korea’s Won Kim, the WBA general secretary, alleges BoxRec officials in Asia expected invitations and some paid hospitality, including travel to attend fight cards in Asia featuring WBA titles, including minor belts.
When that didn’t happen, Kim said, BoxRec hid fights featuring WBA titles from the website’s non-subscribers. This, he said, prompted the WBA to find an alternate record-keeping site to post its results and led to the revival of FightFax.com.
During this process, Kim learned from a promoter in the Philippines that those who subscribed to BoxRec could view WBA results on BoxRec.
“He sent me the screenshot. He’s a [subscribed] member, so he can see the [WBA] results thanks to his annual membership [dues],” he said. “Which means – intentionally – they [BoxRec] tried to hide our titles only. Which is wrong.”
To Kim, what BoxRec has done looks like a cash grab using the absent WBA results to get more people to subscribe.
“I don’t know … all our WBA members are asking why,” he said. “OK, [BoxRec] wants to charge? Charge everybody.”
The dispute aroused theories of what motivated this WBA deletion, and some speculated that boxing financier Turki Alalshikh of Saudi Arabia, whose Riyadh Season sponsors the WBA, was interested in consolidating record-keeping at one site.
That would be in line with Alalshikh’s push to create undisputed title fights and his purchase of “The Ring” magazine, which offers a singular belt to each lineal champion in each weight class.
For years, fans and others have lamented the confusing and frustrating proliferation of belts, creating as many as four champions in each weight class.
In an interview with BoxingScene at the WBC Convention, Fight Fax CEO Han Hoang Mai, who lives in California, said Fight Fax is not working with Alalshikh, a point that WBA Asia’s Kim repeated.
“[Alalshikh] is not involved,” he said.
Kim speculates BoxRec’s editors in Asia have influenced the move.
“I’m not sure if this is about BoxRec’s needs or their editors’ needs, because the BoxRec editors are asking for this. BoxRec is based in the U.K. I’ve never met those people. I’ve only met the BoxRec editors [in Asia],” Kim said.
“Usually, Asian promoters had to invite BoxRec editors [to their fights], and now there are so many complaints [about WBA fights being excluded to non-subscribers]. … I believe it’s [the] editors’ problem, not a BoxRec problem.”
What is a problem to BoxRec head John Sheppard is how FightFax.com has apparently scraped fighter photos and volumes of results from BoxRec to refresh its new site.
“I’m very annoyed that they’ve pirated our data. We’re looking at criminal and civil action against them,” Sheppard told BoxingScene at the recent World Boxing Council Convention in Hamburg, Germany.
BoxRec says this all began with noticing Fight Fax had taken data and photos, and that the WBA was removed due to the sanctioning body’s involvement with Fight Fax.
Kim argues that he learned through a legal case involving WBA Asia’s website that “the sports data is for the public … nobody can own it. Anybody can use it to copy. Just like anybody can use our WBA Asia research online. We had to argue our case before. We lost. Sports data is for the public. You cannot own it.”
Kim reminded that the sanctioning body had no choice but to associate with another record-keeper to keep fight fans and commissions properly informed.
FightFax.com lists all the titles of those who’ve won or fought for belts in all four sanctioning bodies.
“My opinion [is] record-keeping should be kept by the governing body, not a third party,” Kim said. “BoxRec, Fight Fax, they do a good job. But [BoxRec’s] selective actions are not good for the sport. We should just keep WBA results at the WBA website. It’s best for the communication.”
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