WBC offers recommendations on how boxing can return

As the WBC looks to get boxing back underway, the sanctioning body has made public its recommendations to promoters and state commissions on how they can forge a way forward during this coronavirus pandemic.

The WBC specifically suggests that fighters and their camps undergo an isolation period of 14 days prior to fighting in front of no fans — and has even laid out some plans for remote judging. This remote judging would include referees scoring fights by watching fights from their televisions, just like you or I, and using a web portal to log their scores.

It should be noted that while the WBC is circulating this guidance to commissions around the world, they don’t actually have the authority to enforce the adoption of these methods, thus are merely just recommendations.

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman shared these words on his organization’s plans during an online news conference.

“This is a recommendation document for promoters. The idea would be a lockdown place [venue], not open to the public. The press conference and weigh in would have no public. The fighters and their teams would need to go through a 14-day isolation with a daily monitoring of their temperatures.

“This is a proposed protocol for the boxing industry to use. We understand each country have different laws and states in the U.S. have different state laws. This is a general recommendation and it’s not to do with WBC world boxing events, it’s for boxing in general.”

At this point we’ll have and see how federal and local governments, including individual commissions, enact their own plans for allowing boxing events to take place, but it’s almost assured that the sport will be resuming in piecemeal fashion all over the world.