Whatever You Don’t Want – The Politics of Called Fights…

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

An opinion piece from the only Donald worth listening to…

Full Stop – In British English grammar a full stop is a lengthy pause, in the US, you call it a period. In the UK that tends to suggest feminine products. Here it means a period of time where
I look at something in boxing in a little more depth. I am typing from my perspective of a fan who watches the sport closely. It’s an opinion. It is my opinion. Don’t like it? There are other opinions out there but if you don’t like it then good, debate and democracy are a good thing. If you do like it, feel free to spread the word.

Whatever you don’t want – the politics of called fights…

As the world waits to hear what fights are being confirmed in Saudi Arabia for heavyweight world championships and which sanctioning bodies are or are not on board and whether Fury will fight Usyk or Wilder will fight Joshua and who goes first, what’s on second and we don’t know if there is a third, there has been another pantomime in heavyweight boxing.

In the UK.

About the British heavyweight title.

Let’s start with the principal characters. Firstly, the champion Fabio Wardley. A man many have dismissed because he came up through semi-professional ranks and not with an Olympic pedigree. This is a man who has challenged the orthodoxy because he had a dream to go as far as he could and the British title level, even European level would be managing to achieve a dream for him.
Wardley is a free promotional agent; however, he is closely associated with Mr. Edward Hearn of Essex, erstwhile Chief Executive Officer of Matchroom Sport.

And in the red corner, there is, former Olympian, all round nice guy and someone that his management and promotional team believe is a future heavyweight champion of the world, Frazier Clarke. Managed by 258 Management, which was set up and run by Anthony Joshua, Clarke is promoted by Mr. Ben Shalom of Boxxer and Sky Sports fame.

So far, easy to comprehend.

Wardley became British champion when he stopped Nathan Gorman in the 3rd round of their fight at the Wembley Arena in November of last year. He has yet to defend his title. Wardley has beaten such figures as an aging Eric Molina and Simon Valiliy – nobody of current international fame. His first defense was due this year, will still happen and in the background, someone was campaigning for it to be against Frazier Clarke

Now, we all know about the politics of the sport. Rankings can matter little when it comes to voluntary defenses or sanctioning bodies can make perverse decisions over rankings to manage a fighter’s next opponent to become their mandatory. It is believed that 258 Management worked extremely hard to convince the British Boxing Board of Control (BBB of C) that Clarke had done enough to become the mandatory challenger.

They worked so hard; they achieved it.

Negotiations between the two fighters and their representatives began.

They faltered.

The BBB of C stepped in and ordered purse bids.

Matchroom were confident that they would win the purse bid. In the meantime, one of the stumbling blocks was that Frazier Clarke wanted a warmup fight before taking on Wardley.

Why, if his management team wanted him to be called as a mandatory was he now not ready to fight for the British title?

Asked everybody…

This would have been Clarke’s seventh fight professionally. There are no “names” in his professional resume but in the amateur code, AJ, Tony Yoka, Joseph Parker, Joe Joyce – there are quite a few. He also has a gold medal from the Commonwealth Games and a bronze from the Olympics.

But.

Frazier Clarke has never boxed beyond six rounds in a competitive ring: someone wanted him to have an eight rounder to prepare him for the ten rounds of a British title fight. The question wa who?

Well it wasn’t Clarke, he wanted the fight, nor Wardley who wanted the fight, nor 258 Management, on behalf of Clarke who lobbied for the fight to happen or Eddie Hearn who put the deal together to make the fight…

Hearn and Wardley were even, had they lost the purse bids, prepared to fight on Sky, rather than on the Matchroom/DAZN platform.

Purse bids, having been called, were due to happen on a day when Matchroom’s matchmaker, Tom Dallas got on a train in London to travel to BBB of C headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, to submit their bid. On the way there, news broke that Clarke had pulled out of the purse bids leaving Wardley without a sanctioned opponent for his first defense.

They had pulled out the night before, but news had not filtered through till the following day, Dallas was pulled off the train and then it boiled over.

Ben Shalom of Boxxer became the panto villain as it transpired that Boxxer, believing that Clarke was NOT ready, needed another fight and would not enter a competitive bidding process that would mean they could not organize that extra fight.

People could not fathom why a promoter could pull a fighter out of a fight. There was a suggestion Shalom, Boxxer and Sky could not match the financial muscle of Matchroom. Shalom challenged that saying he would make his offer to Wardley public if asked to. Eddie Hearn has called his bluff. Hearn has owned the process and been the most sympathetic of all to Frazier Clarke. It’s been carnage to see a master of the dark arts, up against someone who has not quite mastered an application to become an apprentice.

But the losers are, once again, the boxing public. The truth is that, until it got called and sanctioned nobody really wanted this fight. But now, people dearly want to see it. It might, however, never happen and there are some who are suggesting it has all been orchestrated to hype it up. Judging by the demeanor of both Wardley and Clarke, that has not been the case.

But it also begs another question, no matter who lobbied for it, the fact that people have invested heavily in it happening, if it is called off and people have had their time wasted, there should be some form of sanction attached when the pursuers of the battle call the whole thing off. It’s where the sanctioning body, who do have teeth seem to be unable to find their appetite. Until we see something like that, we may just continue to have such pantomime. Purists shall bemoan the lack of genuine fights whilst media savvy YouTubers, who seem to be able to make fights with ease will take the headlines as the authorities in whom we are supposed to trust, fail to do so.

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