POSTED: Monday December 13th 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dr. C K Wu, Chairman of the World Series of Boxing

As World Series of Boxing (WSB) moves into its exciting fourth week of bouts, Dr. C K Wu, President of the International Amateur Boxing Association and Chairman of the World Series of Boxing reflects on the tournament so far

Dr C K Wu quotes - December 2010

What has the feedback from the launch of the World Series of Boxing been?

The initial reaction to the World Series of Boxing has been very
positive. We had anticipated this, since in many fields people were
waiting for the competition to start before forming an opinion. Now
that we have shown that the WSB is real and it works, people are
starting to take a keen interest in the competition. The uptake among
fans and the media has been excellent.

You attended Beijing’s first home match. What were your impressions?

It was exciting to see the first competitive WSB boxing. I had already
seen one test event and an exhibition match during the AIBA Congress
in October, but this was the first time that the teams were genuinely
competing for the championship and the individual boxers were thinking
ahead to the possibility of direct qualification for the London 2012
Olympic Games through the individual championships. You can see this
in the quality of the bouts: the boxers are obliged to come out strong
from the start, which makes for excellent bouts and a fantastic match
for fans, with five bouts featuring the world’s best boxers over two
hours of competition.

Have there been any surprises?

There is a very good mix of boxers from all over the world competing
in the WSB, so it is interesting to see how some of them have adapted
to living in a different country and training with boxers from several
countries. For the boxers, it is an excellent learning experience.

Since the boxing squads change for every match, the teams will need a
certain amount of time to establish themselves within their respective
conferences, so it’s too early to talk of “surprises”. The teams in
the US also need to learn to take into account an external factor:
competing at over 2000 metres altitude in Mexico City is not the same
as competing in Memphis, where the altitude is barely 100 metres.

How do you see the rest of the regular season developing?

Once there has been a couple of full rotations in each squad, we will
begin to have a better idea of the strength of each team. This will
give us an idea of which teams could be going through to the play-off
stage. The individual ranking will also start to take on much more
importance, since this is what will be used to determine which two
boxers meet in the individual championships for a chance to win direct
qualification for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

We have also learned a lot from the first couple of match weekends.
After all, the WSB is a completely new tournament so there is plenty
of fine tuning to be done. As the competition develops, I expect
corporate interest to develop, allowing the teams to sign up new
sponsors. We have already seen interest from TV channels wishing to
broadcast the WSB in countries outside the franchise territories
(which are covered by the host broadcaster agreements).

What is your vision for the development of the WSB now that the
competition has started?

Our aim was to start the competition with a maximum of twelve teams in
three conferences. I sincerely hope that we can already expand the
tournament after the first season. Since the launch, we have had
expressions of interest from several parties wishing to set up new
teams. But I would also like to see new conferences: Africa and South
America have great potential, the former because of the numerous
African boxers who are already competing in the WSB and the latter of
course because of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

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Keywords · Dr C K Wu · World Series of Boxing · Beijing · London 2012

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