The membership and practice rules must be known before becoming a professional boxer. We cannot become a professional boxer in France without having been an amateur boxer. Previously we had to accumulate number of points with amateur fights to become a professional. The rules have changed and keep changing.
This discipline needs an important investment from the boxer. According the level, the investment from the boxer could train full time in order to be well prepared and efficient the day of the fight, that’s the reason why professional boxing is assimilated as a full time job. Most of the time, professional boxers take part in just a few fights during a whole year. They can be ranking fights or fights for different national competitions organized by the French Federation.
It’s important to know that it’s not easy to organize a professional fight in France because we have to pay each fighter and the organizers must find the money to pay them (usually grants from different partners and sponsors are the sources of that money).
There are different competitions nationally, Europeans championships and worlds championships.
There are 4 competitions in France :
-The National Cretarium for new professional boxers (4 rounds of 3 minutes)
-The French Cup (6 rounds of 3 minutes)
-The league cup (8 round of 3 minutes)
-The National French Championship
The difference of level for a professional boxer is noticed thanks to the different series set up. According to the series that the boxer belongs to, the fighters will fight in 4,6,8,10 or 12 rounds. The boxer who belongs to the series number 4 will fight in 4 rounds of 3 minutes, the boxer who belong to the series number 3 will fight in 6 rounds of 3 minutes, the boxer who belong to the series number 2 will fight in 8 rounds of 3 minutes and the boxer who belong to the series number 1 will fight in 10 or 12 rounds of 3 minutes. To belong to a higher level the fighters need to accumulate numbers of fights with a positive record.
With time, the discipline has evolved, and other competitions arrived in the circuit because professional boxing was having a hard time and had lost its notoriety. For example, the International Association of Amateur Boxing (AIBA) created a competition for professional boxing open to the higher level amateur boxers, named APB (AIBA Pro Boxing).
This professional competition gave the opportunity to qualify for the Olympic Games of Rio. We haven’t had more information about this competition yet, and we don’t know if the AIBA will keep it going. We hope for a repeat of the same competition before future Olympic Games, giving more opportunities like that before Rio.
Another version of boxing is semi-professional, and has been developed under different franchises and we can notice two different evaluations: individual ranking and ranking with the team. The concept is a bit like the NBA. Each team fights against each other throughout different zones (Europe, ASIA, America and South America), then there are semi-finals and finals in each zone and the team that eventually wins the world finals becomes the champion of the World Series of Boxing (WSB). This competition used to give access to the APB championship but we still don’t know for the following years if the APB will keep going. The WSB championship gives an individual classification and the number one of its weight class qualifies for the Olympic Games. That competition still exists today and France has created again its franchise which is the fighting roosters (before it used to be Paris united that have won the WSB title)
Since The Olympic Games of Rio, the regular professional boxer who belongs to the high level can qualify for the Olympic Games. A competition is organized for them.
As managers we wanted to present you the different practices that exist but the professional boxing is a discipline that requires incredible amounts of investment for the fighter but also for the coaches. As volunteers, professional boxing is not the priority of the Boxing Club Nicois, but we obviously can plan and train towards professional boxing. This idea depends on the current members as amateur fighters, because we don’t want to attract a fighter who is already professional and look after his or her career with organizing fights for them. Our aim is to improve the members from the beginning and teach a discipline by valuing the fitness and leisure boxing.
Today the Boxing Club Nicois doesn’t have any professional boxers. However, the professional boxers are welcome in our gym to follow our group lessons or to apply for personal coaching.
All the rules that a professional fighter has to respect and a coach who can look after a professional boxer can be found by clicking on that following link: