Article added: Wednesday 09 December 2020

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Boxing New Zealand newsletter December, 2020

Hi all,

I hope all our members are well and enjoying the freedom to participate in our sport.

A bit of a mish mash of news but hopefully I can bring you all up to date.

Golden Gloves

The North and South Golden Gloves events went off well. Boxing New Zealand engaged a production team to cover content from the North Island Golden Gloves.

Sky Sport was generous enough to sponsor the cost of the production, this was facilitated via the Rob Waddell’s Sports Collective company. They also donated a further $10,000 to Boxing New Zealand.

The content has had more than 35,000 views so far. It appears to have been a tremendous success. We were the highest rating sport for that weekend and Sky TV was thrilled with the response. This was all without prior notice of the coverage.

At the national championships we will attempt to get the word out there earlier.

It was compulsory for Olympic hopefuls to attend either event and the standard of boxing was reported by many as the best seen for a long time.

2020 National Championships, January 2021

Entry Requirements

Males

Elite boxers with a minimum of 10 bouts or Open class regional or Golden Gloves title. Youth, Junior and Cadet boxers with a minimum of 5 bouts or Open class regional title or Golden Gloves title. 

Females

Elite boxers with a minimum of 5 bouts or Open class regional or Golden Gloves title. Youth, Junior and Cadet boxers with a minimum of 3 bouts or Open class regional title or Golden Gloves title.

R & J’s Nationals

Expressions of interest is already called for officials.  Boxing NZ will select R & J’s based on recent performance. The selected R & J’s will then have to attend a Zoom meeting/Seminar presented by Senior Australian officials Wayne Rose and David Pike. This seminar will be mandatory for all selected officials and will take place on the 12^th  and 13^th January 2021 at 7pm.

International Competition

We have had a recent enquiry from a Tasmanian coach asking if it would be possible for a small team of boxers could come to NZ and compete against some local competition.

The New Zealand government is working on a travel bubble with Tasmania/Australia that does not require the isolation process. Dr John McKay is the contact person for this but it is totally dependent on the travel bubble eventuating which at this point has not occurred.

Oceania

We recently attended a Oceania meeting via Zoom video conferencing with our fellow Oceania members.

The meeting was chaired by Mr Ted Tanner from Australia and he and Mr Garry Moore bought us up to date with the proposed AIBA constitutional changes.

Garry is one of three constitutional Lawyers responsible for draughting  the AIBA constitution.

The new constitution will have to be ratified at the up and coming AIBA congress in early December.

The changes to the constitution should fall in line with expectations from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This along with the election of a suitable Aiba president will go a long way towards recognition of AIBA by the IOC.

Some of the changes take away a certain amount of power from the president and executive and  place a lot more power back with the confederation members.

The presidential race would be worthy of writing into a novel, the usual subtle corruption mixed messages and bickering.

The AIBA

The AIBA conference via Zoom is coming up in early this month and this conference will centre on the election of a new president and the adoption of a new constitution.

Boxing NZ had great difficulty in paying the affiliation fees to AIBA in order to be eligible to vote. This complication was bought about by New Zealand anti-corruption laws regarding paying Swiss francs into a United States dollar account in Serbia, all very complicated.

Until last week we were not eligible to vote because of the unpaid fee. The fee was finally paid last month but they still claimed to have not received payment and ruled us ineligible to vote.

After investigation by Boxing NZ we discovered that the fee had been held in the Serbian Bank and not released to AIBA but we presented our paperwork to AIBA to prove the fee had been paid.

This is just so typical of AIBA at present, completely unorganised, understaffed and in turmoil. No wonder the IOC has no faith in the organisation.

There are seven candidates running for the Aiba presidency and of the seven  we believe only two have the integrity to hold the position.

The Candidates are:

• Umar Kremlev, secretary general of the Russian Boxing Federation,
• Anas Al Otaiba Asian Boxing Confederation President from the United Arab Emirates
• Suleyman Mikayilov. Azerbaijan's
• Domingo Solano, Dominican Republic's
• Boris van der Vorst, President of the Dutch Boxing Federation.
• Al-Masri a German referee
• Mohammed Moustahsane Interim AIBA President

What some candidates and their backers do not seem to understand is that if AIBA wants full recognition from the IOC then a clean break that does not include past administration is required. Most candidates are part of the old administration.

The candidate we are supporting is Boris van der Vorst. Boris is a credible candidate who will be acceptable to the IOC. He owns and directs a large Dutch nationwide physio therapy company, he is president of the Dutch Boxing Federation and has reformed boxing in the Netherlands. Keith Walker and I both know Boris personally and believe he has the skills and drive to reform AIBA.

The election of a suitable president and adoption of a new and revised constitution will not necessarily convince the IOC to reinstate AIBA back into the Olympic fold. There will have to be a lot of other reforms completed before they will be convinced AIBA is back on track.

The Olympics and the IOC Boxing Task Force

The boxing task force has been very open with us and they seem to have the bases covered for the Olympics.

We attended another boxing task force Zoom meeting last week which assured us the Olympics are on schedule and the World Qualifiers in Paris will still be held in June.

They have contingency plans in place for unforeseen events.

I was very impressed with their passion for the task and have great confidence they will deliver the goods and have a very robust plan to prevent corruption in refereeing and judging decisions and the manipulations of draws.

Our long list of boxers have one last chance to qualify for the Olympics, this is at the Paris World qualifier in June.

Professional/Amateur Boxing

Members will be aware BNZ is allowing David Nyika to compete as a professional boxer on the Joseph Parker-Junior Fa undercard.

This is allowed under current AIBA rules which do not discriminate between professionals and amateurs anymore.

We asked the task force to confirm it’s position on professionals competing in AOB competition and it has no issues with the current AIBA rule allowing this to occur.

David must compete at the 2020 national championships to fulfil the New Zealand Olympic Committee and Boxing New Zealand Olympic qualification criteria. There is also the possibility of Jerome Joseph-Pampellone having a professional bout prior to the Paris Olympic final qualifiers.

Boxing New Zealand Executive Meetings

Since the covid-19 crisis the BNZ executive has not conducted physical meetings and have kept in touch via Zoom or the phone.

As our finances have been severely impacted by the covid-19 crisis we have considered it prudent to minimise all costs to BNZ.

The direction we have taken at present is to minimise operational costs to BNZ and to concentrate on just encouraging competition within our borders.

Our financial situation is stable and compared to other sports we have come through the covid-19 crisis relatively well.

Income from our two main income sources, the TAB and the Olympic solidarity fund has all but disappeared. The Olympic solidarity money, which is normally available for athlete purposes such as training camps and coaching, is not being paid out by the IOC until they see the required changes within the AIBA organisation.

The TAB income has also all but disappeared due to lack of activity. The Parker/Fa should generate some income. The TAB income is based on Boxing NZ receiving one percent of gross betting on boxing and five percent of net profits.

The NZ Olympic Committee

The Olympic Committee has been a great help for us and we are thankful for this support.

There have been many issues to work through in the Olympic lead-in and chief operations officer Tara Pryor and chief executive Kereyn Smith are always available for assistance.

High Performance Sport NZ

A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with Adrian Blincoe our new contact with High Performance Sport New Zealand.

The meeting was very productive and post Olympics we will should see some assistance coming our way.

Also attending the meeting was an Irish ex-boxer now working with Adrian at HPSNZ. I was most impressed with their willingness to engage with BNZ and it was pretty obvious they are very interested in our sport. It may be of further interest that there is also another ex-Irish boxer that will be working with athletes in HPSNZ. He was disappointed that he could not make the meeting as he had another engagement.

Sport NZ

A complete waste of time for our sport.

Recently Keith Walker and I wrote to Sport NZ and part of the correspondence included the following:

“The funding problem lies more with the lack of recognition of the smaller sports when compared with the bigger favoured sports. This is highlighted by the disparities in Sport NZ Partnership Investment schedule for 2020-2021. Seventeen of our sporting bodies get an average of $452,000 in annual funding whereas the other forty-eight funded sports get a paltry $24,000 average in annual funding. That’s over an 1,800% differential”

Complaint

At the North Island Golden Gloves, a coach claimed the BNZ six-hour stand down rule for boxers at championship events was in breach of the AIBA rule which requires a 12-hour stand down period between bouts.

Boxing NZ is standing by its decision to uphold our local rule for the purpose of allowing the conducting of championships in suitable time frames for organisers and participants.

The AIBA rule states a 12-hour stand down time is required between bouts and if a boxer receives more than four standing 8 counts then the boxer cannot participate further in the competition.

Boxing NZ determines that a boxer can box after a six-hour interval providing the boxer has not received more than two standing 8 counts and must pass a pre-bout examination prior to the next bout.

We believe this does not diminish from the AIBA rule and if anything adds further layers of protection for the boxer.

As a result of someone writing to AIBA, we received a letter signed by AIBA Sports instructing us we were in breach of the AIBA rule.

We responded by asking who we were talking to, what position they hold and by what authority have they to make this decision and until we receive this information we will continue to uphold our local rule. As yet, we have received no reply.

A new face

I have engaged the services of a young man called Manny Pohl to assist with social media and other promotion of our sport. Manny is an ex-boxer coached by Russell Newton and has a passion for our sport and wishes to assist by using his information technology skills in any way he can that may be beneficial to BNZ and AOB boxing. Manny is doing this for the love of the sport and seeks no financial reward.

Below is Mannys brief:

"Kia ora all, 

It is such a pleasure to be involved with boxing again, even if it is outside the ring (for now). I suspect that most of you will not know me, but I trained and fought under Russell Newtown at the Gore Boxing Club for several years.

Since my time in the ring I have graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Bachelor of Commerce and shifted up to Wellington to work with EY in their Technology Consulting team. On a daily basis, my role consists of working with EY’s clients on solving a range of challenges these companies may face. I am a very curious person and I enjoy solving problems, and I am really looking forward to bringing my skills and experience to help grow the sport of boxing. 

It has been a challenging year for everyone and the sport with so much uncertainty, but one thing I do know is that boxing will continue to be looked after by a strong community we have across New Zealand that puts a tremendous amount of effort in behind the scenes. 

I look forward to getting to know some of you better, even if it is virtually. Please feel free to reach out to me by email at Manny.pohlnz@gmail.com or flick me a call or text on 0279509138, I am always happy to have a chat. 

I wish you and your whānau all the best.

Kind regards, 

Manny"

Checkout officialboxingnz on Instagram

Cheers to all and let’s hope 2021 is a great year for our great sport.

Yours,

Steve Hartley,

President,

Boxing New Zealand