It's Not All About Money, Bob!
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Fri, 25 Oct 2024
Top Rank's Bob Arum recently spoke his mind and dissuaded the camp of Murodjon Akhmadaliev from pursuing a legal suit to force the World Boxing Association into stripping Naoya Inoue of his super bantamweight belt and making way for MJ to fight for the vacant title against a designated opponent ASAP.
Arum said by doing so, it is a situation akin to "cutting one's nose to spite one's face" where the only losers are the WBA and Akhmadaliev himself. He said MJ would lose a lot of money foregoing a putative Naoya fight possibly in April 2025 if he doesn't wait for his turn. He didn’t say it but he alluded that the WBA would also lose in terms of money (higher sanction fee) and prestige if it strips Inoue as a result of the litigation.
Arum suggested for Akhmadaliev to drop the legal course and try to negotiate as early as possible for an Inoue title challenge which could happen in April next year either in Japan or the USA.
Sounds cool.
Of course, Arum is only trying to save the reputation of Inoue as one of the only two undisputed world boxing champions in the four belt era (light heavyweight king Artur Beterbiev is the other one) which could affect Naoya's commercial value.
But Arum being Arum, he is always concerned with the bottomline particularly given his plan to bring Inoue back to the USA to star in a major promotion (haven't we heard this line before?). Naoya losing his undisputed status could affect his marketability among discriminating casual fans, he could have feared.
But then, with nothing is 100% certain about Inoue camp's own plans for 2025, particularly Naoya fighting out of Japan and they approving of Akhmadaliev as opponent, MJ cannot be faulted for keeping a hard-line stance.
As I see it, Akhmadaliev does not care much about money as him fighting for the title and becoming world champion again.
The damage has been done. Waiting for the Inoue fight since December 2023 has costed him six months as he had expected to be his WBA mandatory challenger last May 2024 which slot was given to Sam Goodman, the WBO-IBF mandatory. Complicating the situation, Goodman requested for a later date to challenge Inoue. An opening could have been provided Akhmadaliev but Inoue with the backing of Arum picked TJ Doheny to defend against.
As early as that time, pressure has mounted calling the WBA to strip Inoue for his defiance of its order to defend against Akhmadaliev. But all the WBA did was not to sanction Inoue"s fight against Doheny, meaning to say it did not allow its title to be at stake in the bout.
Meanwhile, Akhmadaliev was left holding an empty bag and had to wait for another six months to have another crack at Inoue---which is not happening as Naoya is defending against Goodman.
What is the Akhmadaliev camp to do? Wait another four months for something not certain? By that time MJ would be 16 months out of the ring!
My guess is that the MJ camp will force the issue in the courts.
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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