CHANGING WORLDS

THE Olympics are over, but the big tournaments keep on coming. The AIBA men’s World championships take place at the Stark Arena in Belgrade, Serbia, scheduled to begin on October 24 and finish on November 6.

AIBA have added more weight categories into this tournament, increasing the number of divisions to 13 and changing some of the actual weights from the Olympic categories. This does alter the landscape of international boxing, diverging from the Olympic Games at a time when AIBA is still suspended by the International Olympic Committee. This tournament marks another inflection point in the changes that have been made to the amateur sport. For this event, for the first time, major prizemoney is being made available to medal winners, $100,000 for a gold, $50,000 for silver and $25,000 for bronze. The ruling that AIBA brought in allowing professional boxers to return to these tournaments also alters the complexion of this event, with Olympians who are already invested in their pro careers entering, like Uzbekistan’s Shakhram Giyazov, Armenia’s Hovhannes Bachkov and plenty of others.

The members of Britain’s