Remember when there used to be simply one world champion per weight division with one world title belt?
Well, it is not exactly clear yet, but some how, some way, we might be going back to the good old Genesis days of boxing.
Mike Coppinger of ESPN on X notes:
“Dana White tells ESPN “there’s going to be one belt” per weight class with TKO boxing along with the “basic weight classes that started everything” rather than 17 or 18. “It’ll be like the UFC. … WBC, IBF, WBA, etc., etc. They will deal with those traditional promoters.”
What Mike doesn’t say there, at least yet, is how that will work with all the governing bodies exactly.
Will they all merge their belts into one and how will this work exactly?
The WBC is not going anywhere and it is hard to see the other organizations disappearing as well, unless they were all bought out.
But again, maybe that is not necessarily the case either, maybe the new UFC of Boxing type league will work with all of them and allow them to continue on as their organizations but simply buy the rights and IP to the belts they own, and absorb the sanctioning fees in a standardized fee perhaps per title fight agreed with appropriate parties at a future date, always subject terms of course that are subject to change, no guarantees are ever made in start-ups of course which are high risk and 90 per cent of them always fail.
Even though this TKO venture is backed by heavy hitters with experience, it is still a start-up in boxing, after all.
That is something to consider, the exact mechanics of all this.
The idea is promising.
Back in the day one champion per division brought boxing to the masses on a huge scale.
TKO is the name Turki Alalshikh and Dana White have given this so far but who’s to say that won’t change when the thing plays out and White mentioned they will have to get a distribution or network deal too, whether YouTube or something else.
