There was a time when the IBF was, fairly indisputably, the least problematic of boxing’s major alphabet groups. Granted, that statement is 99 per cent backhand, 1 per cent compliment. It’s like celebrating the best abs at the pie-eating contest or the most natural-looking Kardashian.
But, still. It’s something. It’s preferable to the alternative.
After IBF President Bob Lee was found guilty in August 2000 of taking bribes in exchange for rankings, and the sanctioning group was required to operate under the supervision of a court-appointed overseer, its rankings and mandates frequently almost made sense. The IBF ratings and rules occasionally resembled a merit-based system.
And compared to the WBA, which was beginning to double its fees by splitting titles between “super” champions and “regular” champions; the WBC, which had a funny habit of doing whatever might make Don King happy and was nearly sued out of existence for awarding Graciano Rocchigiani a title and then taking it back and claiming his championship status was a typo; and the WBO, which ranked a dead man and then, while he remained dead, elevated him by two spots … well, the IBF was a relative bastion of integrity.
Fast-forward to 2024, though, and we’re forced to ask: Is that court-appointed overseer still available?
The IBF is now a blight on boxing again — even by boxing’s standards and by alphabet body standards.
(By the way, I made a decision as a member of the media some 23 years ago not to reference alphabet groups by name and give them free publicity and hints of legitimacy if I didn’t have to. But I make exceptions when (a) writing a story in which it’s vital to name the sanctioning bodies to explain a situation with clarity and accuracy, or (b) portraying a sanctioning body in a purely negative light. This article checks both of those boxes.)
The IBF’s tendency to turn undeserving boxers into mandatory challengers and to strip legit champions of their belts would be funny if it weren’t so straight-up damaging to the sport.
This Saturday, Daniel Dubois, who lost by KO to Oleksandr Usyk, will step through the ropes at Wembley Stadium and defend a belt Usyk won and never lost. And he’ll defend it against Anthony Joshua, a man Usyk defeated twice. And the IBF will try to tell us Usyk is not the undisputed heavyweight champion.
And this is probably only the third-most offensively asinine decision the IBF has made to screw over a star fighter in the last few months.
Let’s work our way from that bronze medal for stupidity and chicanery up to the gold. Usyk and Tyson Fury gave the boxing world what it demanded and very much needed, a bout to unify all the belts and crown an undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. But everyone knew going in that whoever won would not be allowed to keep all the belts. The IBF announced prior to Usyk-Fury that the winner would have to defend against the Dubois-Filip Hrgovic winner, and there was just no way that made any financial sense over an Usyk-Fury rematch or, if Fury had won, a long-awaited Fury-Joshua fight.
So one month after winning the defining fight of his life, Usyk relinquished a belt and called it a “present” to the winner of a fight between two men against whom he is a combined 3-0. He said it with appropriate disdain, bordering on mockery, noting, “Anthony and Daniel, listen. I know the IBF title is important to you.” The implication, obviously, is that it isn’t important to Usyk.
Nor should it be. And the sentient among us will not fall into the trap of calling the Dubois-Joshua winner “heavyweight world champion,” because we already have one of those. But it is no less maddening that the heavyweight division had crystal clear waters after Usyk defeated Fury on May 18 and the IBF couldn’t wait to muddy them.
The silver medal for the IBF giving me IBS goes to what it did to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez — the biggest star in boxing and, like Usyk, an undisputed champ.
While I never support stripping a champion of his title if he remains active in the weight class and hasn’t been suspended for some form of cheating, I could maybe, possibly see a case for stripping Canelo if his mandatory challenger was David Benavidez and Alvarez was blatantly dodging his most dangerous and deserving contender. I still don’t think stripping would be appropriate in that instance. But at least there would be some degree of public support for the officious alphabet interference.
Unfortunately, Benavidez was not Alvarez’s mandatory. No, his mandatory was a Cuban boxer based in Germany named William Scull. A glance at Scull’s record shows he is 22-0 (9 KOs). That’s a fine start. And he does have one relatively substantive win on his resume, a unanimous decision over Evgeny Shvedenko, who was 15-0 at the time. Shvedenko has since gone 1-1-1 including a first-round KO loss, but hey, maybe Scull ruined him.
Anyway, that’s it. That’s all the wins over contender-ish guys on Scull’s resume. And since scoring that victory 26 months ago, he has fought three times. Two of them were eight-rounders and the other was a six-rounder.
And Canelo, the cash cow, the man who had acquired all the super middleweight belts, had to fight this unworthy, unproven, utterly anonymous dude or be stripped of his title. He chose instead to fight an unworthy, unproven, but not anonymous opponent, Edgar Berlanga, in a bout with a fighting chance of not bombing on pay-per-view, and so Canelo no longer has the IBF belt, and instead Scull will, in one month, face Vladimir Shishkin for it. Shishkin vs. Scull is a glorified ShoBox fight for a belt that rightfully belongs to Canelo Alvarez.
But at least Usyk and Alvarez don’t really need their IBF trinkets. They’re lineal champs, sure-shot future Hall of Famers. They’re bigger than the belts. The IBF is just costing itself money by stripping them (or inspiring them to vacate, which is the same thing as stripping).
Jaron “Boots” Ennis is not at that point in his career, only has one belt, and thus will suffer somewhat in terms of marketability and opportunity if he doesn’t have that belt. So the gold medal for IBF inanity goes to its rankings and rules enforcement at welterweight, where Boots must defend against Karen Chukhadzhian or be stripped.
Yep, that Karen Chukhadzhian — the very same Karen Chukhadzhian he shut out over 12 rounds just last year in an unwatchable stinker made so by Chukhadzhian’s refusal to engage. What has Chukhadzhian done since to warrant being the IBF’s No. 1 contender? Well, he beat Michel Marcano. (Who?) Then he topped Pietro Rossetti. (I’m not sure if that’s a boxer or a delicious sparkling wine.) And then he outpointed Harry Scarff. (That’s definitely not a boxer; that’s a sex act that’s illegal on three continents.)
This is appalling. The IBF is mandating a rematch that absolutely nobody desires to see — probably not even Chukhadzhian, given how clearly he didn’t want to be there the first time around — that is a waste of Ennis’ valuable time, but if he doesn’t engage in this absurdity, he loses his only belt. So, after failing to get an exemption by convincing any fellow beltholders to face him in a unification fight, it appears Ennis will indeed waste his time and everyone else’s against a man he already dominated for 36 excruciating minutes.
All because the IBF, an organization whose primary job is to rank fighters, apparently doesn’t have the first clue how to rank fighters.
Scull and Chukhadzhian’s rankings aren’t just a couple of isolated incidents. At cruiserweight, lineal champ Jai Opetaia’s IBF mandatory is Huseyin Cinkara, a 39-year-old from Germany who has beaten a grand total of zero legit contenders but whom Opetaia will eventually be forced to fight or else get stripped. At light heavyweight, Artur Beterbiev’s mandatory is one Michael Eifert, another German fighter who has beaten exactly one opponent you’ve heard of: Jean Pascal. In 2023. When Pascal was 40.
And the IBF’s nonsensical behavior isn’t limited to the unworthy boxers it elevates and the mismatches it mandates. On Monday, it got weird with a fight on Saturday’s Joshua-Dubois undercard. Anthony Cacace just shocked Joe Cordina for the IBF junior lightweight title four months ago. He chose to make his first defense against Josh Warrington. But Warrington is not his mandatory. His mandatory is due by November 18 even though he just won his belt.
The IBF isn’t standing in the way of Cacace vs. Warrington. But it isn’t allowing it to be a title fight. Even though Cacace and Warrington are engaging in a scheduled 12-rounder with a weight limit of 130 pounds, if Warrington wins, he doesn’t get the IBF belt. But Cacace can still lose the belt. If Warrington wins, the title becomes vacant. Even though it’s a non-title fight.
Make it make sense. I dare you.
On the bright side, at least Cacace is saving himself a sanctioning fee this Saturday.
Look, alphabet groups doing what’s worst for fighters and fans alike is nothing new. It’s precisely why most people who’ve followed the sport for any significant amount of time gravitate toward lineal titles and try their best to ignore the acronyms.
But the sanctioning groups, sadly, after all these years of defiling the sport, still hold some power to dictate which fights do and don’t happen. Usyk and Canelo told the IBF where to shove that power, because those superstar fighters can. Boots, unfortunately, probably won’t end up doing likewise.
It’s high time for another IBF intervention. Even in the days when Bob Lee was talking about “Fuzzy Wuzzy” on secret recordings and people were testifying to buying rankings with envelopes stuffed full of cash, the IBF wasn’t as embarrassing as it is right now. This is an organization that has completely lost its way.
I didn’t think it was possible to make the WBC, WBA, and WBO look good, yet here we are.
To the folks running the IBF: Please do what you do best, and strip yourself of all involvement in the sport of boxing.
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