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The next few months in the World
Boxing Federation's calendar are
chaotic in a good way.
Just watch the Schedule section
on our website:
There are fights scheduled in
Mexico, Morocco, France,
Switzerland, South Africa,
Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and
a few more countries to be
finalized rather soon and of
course we are extremely excited
to be holding our convention in
Saarbruecken, Germany in
September where we hope to meet
up with old friends and
naturally make many new friends.
Having lived my whole life in
South Africa, I witnessed the
ugliness and horror of
apartheid, where the masses were
ruled by a small minority and
where democracy simply did not
exist. The minority ruled with
great force and often
intimidated the masses with
torture and victimization. It
was a sad time in South Africa's
history, but the release of
Nelson Mandela, arguably the
greatest man in the world,
coupled with free and democratic
elections enabled South Africa
to become a free and great
country. The bottom line is that
inevitably democracy and freedom
will always triumph over
bullying and intimidation.
Nowhere in the world should such
a horror similar to apartheid be
allowed to resurface.
The WBF's growth in Mexico last
year draws an interesting
comparison to apartheid. It is
sad that certain of our
champions have been threatened
and forced to relinquish their
hard earned WBF titles, simply
to accommodate the wishes of
certain people who control
certain television networks and
other people, and like
apartheid, control them through
fear and intimidation. The WBF
has never had a problem with our
champions moving to other
organizations, in fact in
certain cases we have supported
them - but all we ask is for
these champions to make their
choices out of their own free
will, and not to be threatened
to do so.
We at the WBF believe entirely
on fighters having the right to
fight for different sanctioning
bodies, we believe in fighters'
rights to earn an income to
live. They are, after all,
professionals who sacrifice much
in their striving to be
successful. We at the WBF have
never, and will never, threaten
fighters or managers - we will
never stand in the way of
fighters who have other
opportunities.
We will always strive for
honesty, integrity and
professionalism and rather than
look at the other sanctioning
bodies and how they operate, we
prefer to look at ourselves and
to do things as professionally
as possible, always looking at
how we can improve and how we
can bring legitimacy to boxing.
Mexico is one of the greatest
boxing countries in the world
and has always been. The passion
among boxing people in Mexico is
virtually unrivalled. Mexico
deserves the best. Mexico
deserves having their champions
being proud of their titles
irrespective of the organization
they represent. A champion is a
champion! What Mexico doesn't
deserve are bullies who believe
they are bigger than this great
sport of ours. Boxing would
surely be better off without
such arrogant crooks who believe
in intimidation and bullying,
but are in fact the embodiment
of corruption themselves.
Until next time, keep boxing.
Howard Goldberg
PRESIDENT: World Boxing
Federation
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