The World Series of Boxing (“WSB”), which is run by the International Boxing Association, is in its fourth season of bringing together some of the best up and coming amateur pugilists in the world who look to gain additional experience and skills while at the same time, earn money and still maintain their Olympic eligibility, before they begin their professional careers. More importantly, the WSB gives boxing an opportunity to develop a well-organized and highly competitive farm system that the sport desperately needs, allowing it to obtain better fighters and more entertaining matchups for its fans at the professional level.
The WSB started on November 19, 2010 and has grown to include more than 283 boxers from 41 countries, including 50 fighters who competed in the London Summer Olympics and 13 medalists from those games. The boxers compete in one of five weight classes: bantamweight, light welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight.
Within each division, pugilists are drafted onto one of twelve teams, six teams belonging to each conference. Conference A consists of the Algeria Desert Hawks, Argentina Condors, AzerbaIjan Baku Fires, Mexican Guerreros, Hussars Poland and Russia. Conference B includes the USA Knockouts, Germany Eagles, Cuban Domadones, who were added this year, Ukraine Ottomans, Dolce and Gabbana Italia Thunder and Astana Arlans.
The fighters train with their teams for half the year and then travel the world, boxing one another for the other part of the year. The bouts are professional style with the scoring, boxers wear no protective headgear or shirt and there are five, three minute rounds. Fighters earn three points for a victory, two points for a draw and one point if they lose, but garner a point in their match. The more points a boxer earns, the more money they receive in addition to their monthly salary. The top four teams in each division, i.e. the team whose fighters culminated the most points, advance to the playoffs to face off against each other until there is one team left.
This little known but extremely well run organization is one of its kind in boxing and has exponentially grown over the last couple of years. More fighters join each year including highly ranked amateurs and it`s garnering additional media coverage with the bouts being broadcast by the Fighting Spirit. The WSB`s raise in popularity is in large part because it provides boxing fans an opportunity to see fighters from all around the world compete against each other in great boxing bouts, as well as the chance to potentially see the next future professional boxing star(s).
The WSB, more notably, gives boxing its closest entity to a farm system, something the sport really needs, yet it`s one of the few sports that doesn`t have one. While boxing has an amateur system and tournaments, it`s not done at this level, with the talent that the WSB has, nor is it run in an extremely efficient manner, especially with its fighters being on the verge of going professional.
This boxing organization allows amateur fighters the chance to enhance and perfect their skills as they face exceptional pugilists with all kinds of boxing styles and gives them additional fighting experience that can greatly help them when they enter the professional ranks. Since 2012, even boxers with less than 20 professional fights can compete in the WSB. The WSB is strengthening the quality of boxers at the next level, giving fight fans the opportunity to potentially see more entertaining bouts in the pros in the near future and help boxing gain more media attention.