Namibia Professional Boxing and Wrestling Control Board member Ronald Kurtz says the board is being pushed by promoters to relax rules ahead of boxing bonanzas.
He said this during a media conference in the capital on Wednesday. Kurtz’s comments come after a number of boxing stables in the country failed to pay sanctioning and appearance fees for boxers during boxing bills held over the past year.
“Based on our rules as a board, the promoters are supposed to pay their sanctioning fees 14 days before the event. But this does not happen, and in most cases we receive some of that money only a day before, or sometimes on fight night,” he stated.
He added that promoters give the board no choice in cancelling their events as they promote their fights before even being sanctioned.
“As a boxing board, we only ask for 6% of the overall purse as our sanctioning fee, but most promoters fail to pay this amount. We cannot stop the fight because the promoters have done all their promotions, and boxing fans have already bought their tickets and (are) ready for the event.”
Kurtz stated that going forward, the board will be strict on their rules and will not allow any event to be staged if the sanctioning fees have not been paid.
“It’s really unprofessional to have events hosted and promoters not paying their athletes. Our sanctioning fees are not even that much as we only ask for 6%, which is a reduced amount from the 10% that was in place before,” he said.
He added that one of the fights being promoted without being sanctioned include the upcoming Harry Simon against Vikapita Meroro fight, which is slated for 30 June 2018.
“The nation is ready to see these two boxers in the ring, but we have not yet sanctioned that fight. There are a lot of things we are looking at besides the money when it comes to sanctioning that event.
“If they fail to meet some of the requirements, that fight might not even take place,” Kurtz said, without elaborating.
–namibian.com
