Tag Archives: sauerland

Posted on 06/17/2019

By: Shane Willoughby

It isn’t a rare sight to see governing bodies squabble in boxing, whether it’s sanctioning fees, rules or mandatory defences, there is always something. But what is rare is for them to bicker like toddlers whilst a fight is going on.

If you were at the Riga Arena for the WBSS semi-final, you would have seen three fantastic triple headers. Dorticos vs Tabiti, Briedis vs Glowacki and the main event the WBO vs WBC. Caught in the middle of all of it was the German Promoter.

I would not want to be you Kalle Sauerland. Earlier in the day the WBC decided to withdraw their belt from the main event between Breidis and Glowacki as they felt the WBSS had violated there rules.

Which meant the winner of the final bout of the night wouldn’t become a unified champion winning both the WBC and WBO titles.

One of the selling points of the WBSS is the fact that they are able to get the governing bodies to come together and solve the divide with all the championship organizations. And the WBSS definitely succeeded in the Riga Arena.

Not only were they able to get the governing bodies to come together, they almost got into full blown fight. Forget Dorticos vs Tabiti, the real war was the one happening at ring side. Not only were they able to out do the co main event, they were able to out do the 9,000 screaming fans.

The argument could be heard from the car park. There were arms flying, voices raised, at one point the fans stopped watching the main event and started watching the madness outside the ring.

People were criticizing the referee for not signaling the end of the 2nd round, he was most probably distracted by the fight outside.

Why were they fighting you may ask? Well that’s a question for Mr Sauerland. “I’ll leave it to the governing bodies to make a decision” Sauerland added “at the end of the day the discussion [argument] was about referees and point judges and we didn’t need them”.

With all due respect to Mr Sauerland, that answer was probably as clear as mud. It appeared that the German was probably as shocked and as lost as anyone. And that answer from Sauerland embodies his confusion.

But let’s try and pick sense out of nonsense. The row was probably about the WBC not being happy with the judges and referees. And as Sauerland said they were not needed. However, if the WBC were arguing about the referee then after watching that fight it makes sense.

The referee was clearly incompetent. In all the years of watching boxing you won’t find a referee say to the fighters “you are big guys, I’m not going to split you guys up”. Which was said by at the start of the fight.

But probably the funniest moment was when he was giving Glowacki instructions. The polish men doesn’t speak a word of English.

Mauricio Saulimann you might have been right about wanting to select the right referee after all. Either way, it doesn’t appear to be any resolution to this stalemate and the only loser in this is the Mr Sauerland.

Posted on 06/14/2019

By: Shane Willoughby

Ahead of Saturday’s WBSS semi final between Glowacki and Briedis for the WBO and WBC Cruiserweight titles, German promoter Kalle Saurland, is confident the judges won’t be in favour of the home fighter.

Mairis Briedis is a national hero in Latvia; the biggest sports icon in the country. So it is no surprise that the question of bias towards him is brought up, especially as the fights in his home town. However, Saurland stressed that the fight will be completely impartial.

“The officials are not from Latvia. The ring might be in Latvia, but the ring is a ring and as Usyk showed he faught three times away from home in the first one [WBSS]” as confirmed by Saurland.

Whilst it is difficult to believe that judges can be impartial especially when watching modern boxing, Mr Saurland makes a very strong point especially, when Usyk won a close points decision against the Latvian in his backyard.

“The biggest fight that he [Glowacki] has made in my opinion was against Marco Huck and that was also not in Poland, so he shown that he can travel” added Saurland.

Whilst all those points maybe true, it will be interesting to see how well the judges do, when the home supporters are cheering for their guy. Will they be inclined to give any close decision to the pre fight favourite and potential cash cow in the series.

Mairis Briedis is the only fighter who can potentially sell out a venue in a country and is the pre – tournament favourite. In addition to that, the former WBC champion got a favourable decision in his last fight against Noel Gevor.

Many thought that Briedis lost that fight and whilst the fight wasn’t in Latvia, the WBSS couldn’t afford for their only crowd puller to come into the competition off a loss.

All of the speculation and conspiracies are unnecessary and probably carries little substance or truth. If the promoter says a fight will be fair then that is exactly what will happen. When have you ever seen an untruthful boxing promoter?

Posted on 07/10/2017

The World Boxing Super Series Begins
By: Matthew N. Becher

Over the past weekend, the newly created World Boxing Super Series held its very first draft, for its very first tournament. The premise of the new tournament is an open competition for any professional boxer that is ranked in the top 15 of the major sanctioning bodies systems.

In theory the best fighters would face off against one another, until the last man was standing, thus making him the #1 boxer in that weight class. Simple. That is the easy part, the hard part is getting the best fighters to all participate in such a tournament, with everyone having different promoters and so forth. Fortunately, it seems to have worked out for the initial Cruiserweight Tournament.

The seeding of the tournament went as follows. The top 4 fighters were ranked 1-4 by the WBSS, with the four belt holders getting the top rankings.

1: Oleksander Usyk (WBO)
2: Murat Gassiev (IBF)
3: Mairis Briedis (WBC)
4: Yunier Dorticos (WBA)

Then from 1-4, the fighter was allowed to pick or draft his opponent from a group of 4 boxers, for their first round fight. (An exception was made for Gassiev, who had a mandatory against Krzysztof Wlodarczyk. That fight was picked for him)

The first round of the tournament looks like this.

Oleksander Usyk (12-0 10KO) v. Marco Huck (40-4-1 27KO)
Murat Gassiev (24-0 17KO) v. Krzysztof Wlodarczyk (53-3-1 37KO)
Mairis Briedis (22-0 18KO) v. Mike Perez (22-2-1 14KO)
Yunier Dorticos (21-0 20KO) v. Dmitry Kudryashov (21-1 21KO)

Literally the best of the best in the Cruiserweight division will be competing against each other, until one is standing with all the belts, the inaugural Muhammad Ali Trophy and possibly a $1 million dollar bonus for advancing though semifinals and the championship round.

The tournament is slated to begin in early September and rap up by Mary of next year. The location of the fights have yet to be determined and will be placed in locations that match up well for each fight.

“To unify a division and spotlight a division that has clearly been underappreciated, even though the fights in the ring are always among the most exciting in the sport, irrespective of the division, that those four champions, if you look at the record – they are all undefeated. Most of their wins, the vast majority have come by knockout. So these are all big punchers, undefeated. I’m really excited,” said Richard Schaefer, the Chairman of the Americas for Comosa, who helped put this field together alongside fellow promoter Kalle Sauerland (the Chief Boxing Officer for Comosa).

This is a very exciting tournament for boxing and especially for the roll out of the new World Boxing Super Series. With formats like this, expect many division to start falling in line and possibly getting to see the best match up against the best in the near future.