Stripped Crawford Addresses WBC: Was It Justified?

Terence Crawford has responded after The WBC stripped him of his super middleweight belt after his failure to pay sanctioning fees.

Crawford said The Ring Magazine title is the “only belt that’s recognizable.” This was after the WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman confirmed that the title was revoked due to Crawford’s failure to pay $300,000, which represented 0.6 percent of his $50 million fight purse from facing Canelo Alvarez. Crawford implied that it could have been resolved, stating that the other three major sanctioning bodies (WBA, IBF, WBO) “accepted what I was giving them.” The Interim champion Christian Mbilli will now face Hamzah Sheeraz for the vacant title. The winner of the Mbilli-Sheeraz contest will then be mandated to defend against Lester Martinez.

“I’m still the champion in the division because you know why? The only belt that’s recognizable as the champion is the Ring belt, baby. That’s the number one belt in the division that trumps all belts, and guess what? It’s free. History has already been made, baby, the great. Like I said yesterday, I am a legend, and I’m going to leave y’all with that,” Crawford said

Who Is Right?

Crawford arguably has a point. The Ring Magazine belt represents the lineal championship. A fighter must defeat the reigning champion to earn the belt. Champions like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Floyd Mayweather Jr. have all held it. As Crawford angrily pointed out, “The Ring’s belt is free.” The sanctioning fees could be seen as a form of taxation on the fighter’s earnings.

Despite its controversies, the WBC belt is often considered the most prestigious of the four major titles due to its long history. The WBC belt also has significant power in terms of rankings and mandatories. And yet, previous fighters like Floyd Mayweather and Andre Ward have spoken out against sanctioning fees.

Previous Fighters

“People don’t know you have to pay, for every belt you win, there’s a sanctioning fee. If a fighter has just the regular belt, he has to pay a sanctioning fee. If a fighter is a super champion, he has to pay a sanctioning fee. This is not good for the sport of boxing. Every fighter is a champion now. Belts now is like a fighter winning an amateur trophy. “We gotta clean this sport of boxing up. This s—, this doesn’t look good,” Mayweather said

“I don’t like them. Maybe I’m ignorant to the finer details. But I really need somebody to help me understand what the sanctioning bodies do. How do they justify a percentage of your gross pay? Three percent to be exact. Multiple belts doesn’t stay at three percent—it goes up to three percent per belt. Some will say, ‘They supervise the fight, they send their officials.

“They have commissions for that. For example, if there is a WBO belt, they’ll have a WBO official sitting ringside with a WBO patch. No disrespect, but we don’t need that. That’s going to cost me three percent, I don’t need that official presiding over it. We have a whole commission for that—it’s their job,” Ward stated