With just a matter of weeks to go until the much anticipated undisputed fight between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk, the WBC president has given a big update on how many judges there will be for the fight and how they will be selected.
It takes place on May 18 and sees Fury and Usyk come together in Saudi Arabia to contest the undisputed title for the first time in 25 years. Speaking to OLBG, Sulaiman spoke about the desired changes but admitted they would be hard to make.
“The proposal is there, and we are going to have discussions but in reality, it is hard to make changes in boxing.
“There is resistance to change and heavy comfort in leaving things as they are and being traditionalists even though we have seen so many fights with split decisions in the last six months and high calibre judges making 116-112 for one fighter and 116-112 for the other last weekend.
“The reason for having six judges is to have more information. The more judges there are, the less possibility of bad scoring that is the reality. If four or five out of six see one winner, then it is more concrete than a split three.”
He then gave details on how the judges would be selected as Fury gets back to sparring for the first time since he sustained a cut which delayed this fight from happening in February.
“The principle for that fight will be that each organisation will appoint one judge or referee and will go through a process that both camps will have a say and a veto and then a process to the final panel. There will be no British and no Ukrainian judges for the fight.”
This thorough selection process should ensure that everyone is happy with the judges – assuming that is that the Fury vs. Usyk fight goes the distance and scorecards are needed at all.