Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The grant­i­ng of a $1.9 mil­lion box­ing card to the son of the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol (TTB­BC) Spe­cial Ad­vis­er Boxu Potts has al­leged­ly led to the ax­ing of board mem­bers-pres­i­dent Ab­du­ul Haqq and Ri­car­do Phillips, while board mem­bers Janette Den­nis and Mala Na­sib were al­leged­ly ter­mi­nat­ed for fail­ing to car­ry out di­rec­tives. Sun­day Guardian learned that all four mem­bers were on the TTB­BC 'hit list' long be­fore a de­ci­sion was tak­en to axe them af­ter they re­port­ed­ly butted heads with Potts over sev­er­al di­rec­tives with which they failed to com­ply. But Potts who was ap­point­ed on Oc­to­ber 10 last year, yes­ter­day in­sist­ed that the mem­bers were re­lieved for fail­ing to com­ply with the nec­es­sary guide­lines.

The TTB­BC spe­cial ad­vis­er al­so con­firmed to Sun­day Guardian that his son Givoan­ni ap­plied for the card to fi­nance an event sched­uled for Box­ing Day (De­cem­ber 26) at Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. "My son is a box­ing pro­mot­er. There are five pro­mot­ers in T&T and my son is free to ap­ply for what­ev­er card he wants in this coun­try. It is not an al­le­ga­tion, my son has the right to ap­ply for a box­ing card. "When a pro­mot­er ap­plies for a box­ing card they have to sub­mit a bud­get. The box­ing board would make a de­ci­sion to rec­om­mend to the Min­istry of Sports for fund­ing. A per­son can ap­ply for $100 mil­lion but it is the Box­ing Board to rec­om­mend how much mon­ey they would give," Potts stat­ed. It was in a let­ter dat­ed No­vem­ber 15, Gio­van­ni of Uni­fied Pro­mot­er's Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T wrote to Haqq re­quest­ing the card to pro­mote the event.

The let­ter stat­ed: "The above men­tioned is ap­ply­ing to the TTB­BC to pro­mote a pro­fes­sion­al and am­a­teur box­ing card, with mixed mar­tial art and wrestling as added at­trac­tion on the said card. This event is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 26, 2011 (Box­ing Day) at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, please bear in mind bout(s) are sub­ject to change, as you are aware box­ing is a hurt­ing sport and from time to time fight­ers may be hurt in prepa­ra­tion for their up­com­ing fights." Al­so ex­pect­ed to join the line-up are two am­a­teur bouts, two mixed mar­tial arts bouts and two wrestling bouts. It was this let­ter, Sun­day Guardian learned, that cre­at­ed the con­tention and prompt­ed the mat­ter to be re­port­ed to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Phillips: I was fired for op­pos­ing di­rec­tives

Phillips main­tained yes­ter­day that he was giv­en the boot be­cause he re­fused to sup­port the grant­i­ng of the card to Pott's son. "It is wrong! I want­ed ab­solute­ly no part of the grant­i­ng of that box­ing card so I walked out of that meet­ing. We have the spe­cial ad­vis­er of TTB­BC and his son is ap­ply­ing for a box­ing card from TTB­BC, how could this be right? I could not sit there and sup­port the grant­i­ng of that box­ing card. Oth­er mem­bers sup­port­ed it; but it is just not right and I con­sid­ered it head­ing down a dan­ger­ous path. We were told that mem­bers were go­ing to pay the price and that is ex­act­ly what tran­spired." The ex-board mem­ber fur­ther claimed that oth­er pro­mot­ers were be­ing side­lined in favour of "pre­ferred pro­mot­ers".

Phillips said while TTB­BC ac­knowl­edged that the box­ing fra­ter­ni­ty need­ed to be re­vamped, the prop­er process was not be­ing fol­lowed. "What was hap­pen­ing is dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks. There was a par­tic­u­lar in­stance where the board felt a par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual should be sup­port­ed giv­en that she was from Laven­tille and af­ter mi­grat­ing got recog­ni­tion in Cana­da. The spe­cial ad­vis­er agreed to the box­ing card and at the last minute in­formed the board that he was not sat­is­fied with the box­er's record. The doc­tor's med­ical re­port gave the box­er the all clear to fight but two days be­fore the fight the box­ing card was re­duced from $900,000 to $296,000.

"How­ev­er, days lat­er we re­ceived a re­quest for a box­ing card for $1.9 mil­lion. We raised con­cerns be­fore and no­body want­ed to lis­ten. Things reached to a stage where board mem­bers were be­ing told if you do not sup­port some­thing then you would be re­placed. Quite frankly, we were be­ing asked to con­sent to weird and un­usu­al re­quests and I felt enough is enough. Those that were fired were the ones that op­posed di­rec­tives." When con­tact­ed, Na­sib re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue on­ly say­ing: "I learnt I was fired via the me­dia. I re­ceived no of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the min­is­ter or the min­istry. It is dis­ap­point­ing be­cause we do not know what we were fired for." Haqq, how­ev­er, de­clined com­ment. Sev­er­al at­tempts to reach Den­nis proved fu­tile.

Potts: Board mem­bers com­mit­ted a vi­o­la­tion

Potts, how­ev­er, had a dif­fer­ent sto­ry to tell. He said con­trary to the World Box­ing Cham­pi­on rules, the rel­e­vant med­ical tests and con­tracts were not in place for the is­suance of a box­ing card grant­ed two months ago. "One of the main things that al­lowed these peo­ple to get fired is that they al­lowed a box­ing card to be per­mit­ted against my best ad­vice. I had first agreed for the card to be giv­en to the pro­mot­er but when I re­alised that a HIV test was not con­duct­ed I ob­ject­ed. No box­er can fight with­out a HIV and preg­nan­cy test in the world and they al­lowed this to hap­pen.

"Where are these doc­u­ments? Once these tests are not con­duct­ed you may as well play Russ­ian Roulette. They did not fol­low the guide­lines and found them­selves in hot wa­ter and are now look­ing for red her­rings," an irate Potts stat­ed. On Fri­day, the sacked board mem­bers were re­placed by new ap­pointees Sam Wor­rel, Neil Greaves and Collin Mills.