With the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture having promised to top up boxers’ purses, national and provincial champions as well as their challengers are clearly going to earn big bucks.
A ministerial directive has proposed that national champions must be paid a minimum of R120 000 when they defend their titles compared to the R70 000 set by Boxing South Africa (BSA). On the other hand, purses for South African title challengers must, according to the proposal, go up to R70 000 from R25 000.
And provincial champions will earn R60 000 for their title defences, up from R25 000. It’s also been proposed that title challengers at provincial level must be paid R30 000 compared to the R15 000 set by BSA.
Another ministerial directive is that there will be no title fights without championship belts having been secured. This means that a boxer would become an outright owner of a championship belt after just one win.
“Purchase and replacement of championship title belts for boxers who were never given their belts was a once off intervention by the department. Going forward, Boxing SA must just ensure that this never happens again. This means that no more title fights must be approved without title belts secured and paid for upfront,” a ministerial directive said.
Previously, male boxers would only become outright owners of championship belts once they had made five successful title defences. And female boxers would only own the championship belts after making three successful title defences.
