Nicholas Clarke

Uni­fied Box­ing Pro­mo­tions' Gio­van­ni Potts says his com­pa­ny will no longer re­ly on the Min­istry of Sports for fund­ing as it turns its at­ten­tion to build­ing a re­la­tion­ship with cor­po­rate T&T. Potts made the com­ments dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry's head of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. UBP came un­der fire in Jan­u­ary when al­le­ga­tions sur­faced that Potts, the son of Spe­cial Ad­vi­sor to the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol, Boxu Potts, had re­ceived pref­er­en­tial treat­ment in be­ing grant­ed $1.9 mil­lion to stage an event, which was even­tu­al­ly can­celled be­cause of the re­sult­ing fra­cas. Af­ter shelv­ing its plans for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od, the com­pa­ny will re­turn to ac­tion on Au­gust 30 with an all-star card at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty held to co­in­cide with T&T's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia yes­ter­day, Potts in­sist­ed that not one cent of the event's $654,000 bud­get would be cov­ered by the gov­ern­ment. "I have tak­en a de­ci­sion that I am go­ing to go cor­po­rate with box­ing," he said. "Over the years we pro­mot­ers have be­come very de­pen­dent on the Min­istry of Sport and I am go­ing to throw this out there that this card will not be fi­nanced by them. Box­ing in T&T is to be­come a self suf­fi­cient in­dus­try. "Cor­po­rate spon­sors can aid with the all­round de­vel­op­ment of the sport and I will let them know that box­ing is be­ing re­brand­ed with a pos­i­tive im­age through fight­ers like Kirt Sin­nette, Ria Ram­nar­ine, Kevon Di­az and Prince Lee Isidore. "This is the di­rec­tion we want to car­ry the sport and UBP have been the trend­set­ters for the past 10 years and we are just go­ing to car­ry on the man­tle as Boxu did be­fore I took over in 2010." He re­vealed that spon­sor­ship ne­go­ti­a­tions were cur­rent­ly in place with BET Cen­tric, ES­PN, Sports Max and the Caribbean Me­dia Net­work. Potts al­so hit out at his de­trac­tors from with­in the sport, whom he felt had been mak­ing their per­son­al in­ter­ests their top pri­or­i­ty.

"Oth­er pro­mot­ers in box­ing who claim to love the sport are go­ing in the di­rec­tion of cre­at­ing mis­chief and I wel­come you. Bring it on! This time around, I am tak­ing on all chal­lengers who de­cide to try to bring the sport in­to dis­re­pute. At the end of the day, the on­ly peo­ple who are get­ting hurt are the box­ers. I could go on and on with the names of box­ers who have been suf­fer­ing at the hands of mis­chief mak­ers who claim that Uni­fied Pro­mot­ers can't do it. Well if we can't, you all pick up the man­tle and do some­thing pos­i­tive with the sport and stop mak­ing the box­ers suf­fer." The up­com­ing card's main event will see WBC Cabofe Light Heavy­weight cham­pi­on Kirt "The Tech­ni­cian" Sin­nette up against a yet to be named op­po­nent with the win­ner earn­ing a shot at the WBC World ti­tle against cur­rent cham­pi­on Amer­i­can Chad Daw­son. Among the can­di­dates to take on the 38-year-old Sin­nette are Chris Hen­ry, Glen John­son, Luis Gar­cia, Um­ber­to Savi­ni and El­ci­dor Alvirez. The de­ci­sion will be made by the TTB­BC with­in the next few days be­fore they sub­mit their pro­pos­al to the WBC. Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Sin­nette said: "I feel as though my dream is about to come true. I al­most lost that dream in the past but now I see it right there wait­ing for me to come and take it."