Robert Smith, General Secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, has confirmed that the current investigation by the WBC will have no impact on their decision to re-instate Conor Benn’s British boxing licence.
Benn voluntarily relinquished his BBBofC licence back in October before a hearing took place where allegations of misconduct against Benn were later upheld. The ruling came after Benn had been found to have two positive drugs tests.
Conor Benn and his team have since sent a 270-page document to the WBC, which supposedly explains the contamination of his test results.
In an interview with Pitch Boxing, Smith explained that whilst the BBBofC will be happy to look at the WBC investigation, it will ultimately bear no impact on whether or not Benn will get his British licence back.
Instead, Smith confirmed that the governing body will launch an investigation of their own on the matter once they receive the proper documentation from Conor Benn’s legal team.
“Obviously, I can’t say too much because there is a lot of legal things going on. However, the information that we require, we have not received, for whatever reason that Mr. Benn’s legal team have decided. We are waiting, I understand that they have sent the document to the WBC, we have not seen that document.”
“The WBC do not license boxers, they just sanction championship fights, so if that is the way that they want to go, it won’t make any difference to us. We will wait and see what they say, but we will do our own investigation when we get the information that we require.”
“We all know, quite simply, that he was failed two tests. We have heard it on the media, the reasons why, I haven’t seen the documentation to say why. So let’s just wait to see what comes our way.”
Benn is technically free to fight at the moment, albeit under a different license, but is choosing not to do so until the findings of his WBC investigation are released.
He has told promoter, Eddie Hearn, of his wishes to fight names like Chris Eubank Jr, ‘Tank’ Davis, Kell Brook and Manny Pacquiao upon his return.