Day three from the WBO’s 36th Annual Congress saw the machinery of the governing body take some serious shape one day away from the rankings committee meeting.
Today in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic representatives of all WBO ranked fighters will meet to argue their respective fighter's case to move up in the rankings system towards a world title shot..
Myself and ProBox’s Sonny Waghorn bumped into promoter Vick Green, who was in town to get number 1 ranked super featherweight Albert Bell a crack at a world title. He gave us a fascinating insight into how the rankings meeting is conducted having gone through the process to get his charge to the number 1 position for Emanuel Navarrete’s world title. We met Albert Bell later that day also telling us how important the rankings system is for him and his team. It was a facet I had never seen of the sport, the glitzy Caribbean resort playing host to; who fights who next year. Nisse Sauerland, Malik Scott and pound-4-pound star Terence Crawford appeared in the welcome bar ahead of the convention’s most important day.
ProBox TV spoke with WBO president Francisco Valcarcel later in the evening at the WBO’s Night of Champions boxing show. We had a fascinating interview where we reminisced about when the WBO was not approved as a legitimate world title, especially by the British Boxing Board of Control (the exclusive interview available very soon). He spoke with pride when discussing the fighters I watched growing up in the UK in the 1990’s; Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Steve Collins, Naseem Hamed and Joe Calzaghe, who he credited for making his organisation a part of the-four-belt-generation today.
The fun didn’t stop there, we also spoke with Dmitriy Salita regarding Jarrell Miller and undisputed middleweight champion Claressa Shields. There was an unexpected surprise when IBF president Daryl Peoples joined us for an exclusive interview, surprising a huge supporter of his supposed rival.
