This isn’t the first attempt to create a trade union for British boxing.<\/p>\n
In 2002, former world champion Barry McGuigan launched one, with the intention of reducing the number of fighters who struggle financially after retiring.<\/p>\n
But as Matt Christie – editor of BoxingScene – explains, it wasn’t successful.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately, you have to have agreement from the boxers that these people are trying to govern, that they are willing to give a certain percentage of their purse to a union, and that’s the difficulty,” says Christie.<\/p>\n
The GFA has a different idea for funding – relying, instead, on fans and promoters.<\/p>\n
“All we ask for from the promoters is that they can maybe add a small booking fee for the union – let’s say a couple of pounds here or there on to every ticket,” Smith says.<\/p>\n
“So, therefore, the fans will ultimately be paying for it on behalf of the promoter.”<\/p>\n
Robert Smith – general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, which oversees the sport – says he would support the union if it was created.<\/p>\n
“We would help set up a union but, of course, we can’t be part of that union,” he says.<\/p>\n
“That’s what unions are. They’ve got to be independent from the board. But, for sure, we’d help to do that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This isn’t the first attempt to create a trade union for British boxing. In 2002, former world champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-481039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}