Drago
Bankspieler
Es handelt sich um den amtierenden WBC Weltmeister im Federgewicht, Chi In-jin:
The only Korean world champion, has resigned his WBC featherweight title and plans on trying his hands and feet at K-1. The circumstances behind this resignation are mysterious, so I sought out his manager/trainer.
Chi’s retirement from boxing has less to do with the sport itself than it has with the failure of Korean boxing to protect its fighters.
In Jin Chi started his professional career at the age of eighteen. In late 1991, he had has first fight and lost a four round decision. He continued fighting and won his next twenty-four, fourteen by knockout, earning the Korean bantamweight title in 1994 and in 1995 the OPBF bantamweight belt. He fought for the first time outside of Asia when he faced then undefeated and pound-per-pound top-ten fighter Eric Morales on the undercard of a Roy Jones fight at the Staple Center in Los Angeles in 2001.
Chi lost a unanimous decision to the featherweight champion, but he showed enough heart and grittiness to put him on the fast-track to a title shot. After a disputed draw to England’s Michael Brodie in 2003, he went back to England in 2004 to knock Brodie out in the seventh to win the WBC featherweight title. He defended it twice but then was upset by Japan’s Takashi Koshimoto in 2006. After Rodolfo Lopez upset the Japanese fighter, Chi fought the new champion in Seoul. In December of last year, Chi earned a unanimous decision win and reclaimed his WBC title. Since then plagued by hand injuries, cancelled fights, and management problems, Chi has been unable to fight. Recently he gave up his boxing career for K-1 fighting.
So, the inevitable question was asked. Why did Chi quit boxing?
“These days in Korea, there is no boxing promoter. Boxing isn’t popular. Now K-1 fighting is becoming popular. Chi was finding it hard to find fights,” Kim says.
But if he couldn’t find a promoter in Korea, why didn’t he go to America? He is a fighter with name recognition in America because of his war with Eric Morales. He was all set to face Oscar Larios on HBO’s Boxing After Dark back in May. He had a mandatory against Jorges Linares all lined up. He almost had a fight with Manny Pacquiao set to go in China. Why couldn’t he go to America, or somewhere else, and let an American promoter take care of it?
“His hands hurt so he couldn’t go to America. He hurt both his left and right hands, so he couldn’t fight. The fight in May had to be called off. And the fight with Pacquiao in Macau was called off, too. He just couldn’t get a fight.”
So he gave up his title just like that. He couldn’t find a way to fight because fights were either called off or he was injured, so he closed up shop.
But a fighter with a championship always has a fight in the future. Organizations are kind enough to put fifteen guys all in a row and the champion picks one. It is quite a jump from being a boxing champion to giving up your title, and then starting a new martial art. Is Chi going to go through with his threat to be a K-1 fighter?
“I don’t know if Chi is going to go to Japan. But K-1 is no good for Chi. He’s a boxer. He’s not a K-1 fighter. Chi will have big problems with K-1. But boxing is having big problems with K-1, too.”
That’s what I say and that’s what everyone who knows the two sports would say. A boxer is not a K-1 fighter and a K-1 fighter is not a boxer. So why would he join that sport?
The question, as is always the case with boxing, revolves around money. Chi feels like he has been underpaid, ripped off, and mistreated by those managing his career. The Korean sports daily “Sports Chosun” had Chi on the cover saying “I was a world champion treated worse than a dog.” In the article, Chi uses another animal comparison: “The bear does all the tricks and the money goes to the master,” Chi said. And then he compares himself to a victim of human trafficking: “I was a modern version of a slave.”
Now, Chi wasn’t borrowing from the wisdom of Floyd Mayweather Jr. who after being offered an HBO contract in the tens of millions of dollars got all Frederick Douglass on us. Chi actually has a point. His position on boxing in Korea and his giving up a world championship belt has created a firestorm of criticism from the media, print and broadcast both, about the business of boxing in Korea, a business that fighters like Tim Witherspoon would recognize.
The structure of people around a Korean boxer is the same as in America. There is the trainer training the fighter, the manager managing the fighter, and the promoter promoting the fighter. Except for the trainer, the function of these people is different than in America. The promoter holds all the power. He tells the manager when, where, and for how much the fighter will fight. The manager then tells the fighter what the promoter has offered. There is little to no negotiation on behalf of the fighter. The fighter has to take the promoter’s offer or leave it. For being a manager in name but a messenger in function, the manager is given 30 percent of the fighter’s purse. Clearly the power is one-sided, weighted heavily on the side of the promoter.
This kind of arrangement has led to problems before. World super flyweight and bantamweight champion Sung Kil Moon and bantamweight champion Jung Il Byun both sued to get out of their contracts, pointing to a conflict of interest with their managers not negotiating but parroting the promoter’s terms. They cited a lack of power for the fighter and the trainer.
Now, the case of Chi mirrors the situation of those two past champions. His last fight was against WBC featherweight champion Rodolfo Lopez. This fight was in Seoul and Chi boxed masterfully to regain his title. For all his pains, he wasn’t paid that much for the fight.
When asked about this, Kim said, “of course he wasn’t paid much for this fight. He was only the challenger. He could only get 100 million won [$100,000] but for his next fight he was going to get 1 billion won [$1 million]. When he became champion, he was going to make a lot of money.”
Those prices seemed fair to me. Only Chi had been quoted as saying something different. In “Sports Chosun,” he claimed he had been promised $20,000 to fight Lopez but was paid less than $10,000 for the fight. Given his injuries and his small purse, he has been unable to fight and has had trouble supporting his family.
So, I asked Kim about the article in “Sports Chosun.”
“What is in that paper isn’t true. It isn’t what Chi thinks. Some guys in K-1 started talking to Chi, getting him to believe stuff, making him feel mistreated. That’s why he says those things about boxing. That isn’t Chi in the article.”
When asked about the purses Chi claims to have received, Kim waves his hand dismissively and talks to one of the younger boxers.
I was given a chance to think.
For Chi, despite his bank account being in the red, the money isn’t the only issue. It’s about his lack of power, about his considering himself a slave. In Korea, he can’t make decisions for himself as long as the promoter holds all the power. Others including former champions Young Su Choi and Jung Il Byun have expressed an understanding for Chi’s situation and a sympathy for his frustration as he quixotically attempts to take down the boxing powers in this very conservative and Confucian society.
But for all the emotions riding high from Chi, the media, and his manager, Kim still holds out some hope that a solution can be made.
“Chi has cut off his phone and has moved out of Seoul to the countryside. Now, he has stopped training, but maybe he will box again.”
As I said goodbye and gave Kim my thanks, I felt bad for Kim, for Chi, and for Korean boxing. Chi after all had accomplished a lot with the sport and to some extent transcended being simply a Korean champion. He fought hard against Morales in America; he dismantled Michael Brodie in the U.K; and when he regained his title many believed it was finally his chance to cash in. (Sitting at ringside for the Lopez fight, I noted all the talk was about how Chi hadn’t made much money boxing.) When the Pacquiao fight seemed a probability, all in the Korean boxing community were pleased that Chi would finally get his due. Whenever Chi’s name was mentioned alongside a top featherweight or super featherweight, all boxing insiders from Korea to America approved of the match up. He had a solid reputation going for him.
Now things seem to be going against Korean boxing.
As I got to the street, I passed the gruel restaurant again. I thought of that Charles Dickens novel “Oliver Twist,” where in an orphanage, Oliver finished his meager helping of gruel got up from his seat, approached the person slopping it out, and asked for “more.” Just as my sympathies were with Oliver, so are they with Chi.
As Oliver’s request for “more” spoke about the plight of those not benefiting from the Industrial Revolution, Chi’s protest against the institution of Korean boxing makes a stand for the Korean boxer. He’s a boxer trying to free himself from the grip of the Fagans of the boxing world, those promoters running the show, dictating the terms, and not negotiating with the fighters.
So let’s hope, his protest works and with gloves on and no kicking allowed, we see “more” of Chi in the boxing ring with Kim in his corner.
But don’t count on it. I asked another boxing manager about Chi’s chances of coming back as a boxer.
“No way. He’s signing with K-1 for real money,” he said holding up his fingers in the ok sign meaning money in Korea. “He’s getting 1 billion won [$1,000,000].”
The only Korean world champion, has resigned his WBC featherweight title and plans on trying his hands and feet at K-1. The circumstances behind this resignation are mysterious, so I sought out his manager/trainer.
Chi’s retirement from boxing has less to do with the sport itself than it has with the failure of Korean boxing to protect its fighters.
In Jin Chi started his professional career at the age of eighteen. In late 1991, he had has first fight and lost a four round decision. He continued fighting and won his next twenty-four, fourteen by knockout, earning the Korean bantamweight title in 1994 and in 1995 the OPBF bantamweight belt. He fought for the first time outside of Asia when he faced then undefeated and pound-per-pound top-ten fighter Eric Morales on the undercard of a Roy Jones fight at the Staple Center in Los Angeles in 2001.
Chi lost a unanimous decision to the featherweight champion, but he showed enough heart and grittiness to put him on the fast-track to a title shot. After a disputed draw to England’s Michael Brodie in 2003, he went back to England in 2004 to knock Brodie out in the seventh to win the WBC featherweight title. He defended it twice but then was upset by Japan’s Takashi Koshimoto in 2006. After Rodolfo Lopez upset the Japanese fighter, Chi fought the new champion in Seoul. In December of last year, Chi earned a unanimous decision win and reclaimed his WBC title. Since then plagued by hand injuries, cancelled fights, and management problems, Chi has been unable to fight. Recently he gave up his boxing career for K-1 fighting.
So, the inevitable question was asked. Why did Chi quit boxing?
“These days in Korea, there is no boxing promoter. Boxing isn’t popular. Now K-1 fighting is becoming popular. Chi was finding it hard to find fights,” Kim says.
But if he couldn’t find a promoter in Korea, why didn’t he go to America? He is a fighter with name recognition in America because of his war with Eric Morales. He was all set to face Oscar Larios on HBO’s Boxing After Dark back in May. He had a mandatory against Jorges Linares all lined up. He almost had a fight with Manny Pacquiao set to go in China. Why couldn’t he go to America, or somewhere else, and let an American promoter take care of it?
“His hands hurt so he couldn’t go to America. He hurt both his left and right hands, so he couldn’t fight. The fight in May had to be called off. And the fight with Pacquiao in Macau was called off, too. He just couldn’t get a fight.”
So he gave up his title just like that. He couldn’t find a way to fight because fights were either called off or he was injured, so he closed up shop.
But a fighter with a championship always has a fight in the future. Organizations are kind enough to put fifteen guys all in a row and the champion picks one. It is quite a jump from being a boxing champion to giving up your title, and then starting a new martial art. Is Chi going to go through with his threat to be a K-1 fighter?
“I don’t know if Chi is going to go to Japan. But K-1 is no good for Chi. He’s a boxer. He’s not a K-1 fighter. Chi will have big problems with K-1. But boxing is having big problems with K-1, too.”
That’s what I say and that’s what everyone who knows the two sports would say. A boxer is not a K-1 fighter and a K-1 fighter is not a boxer. So why would he join that sport?
The question, as is always the case with boxing, revolves around money. Chi feels like he has been underpaid, ripped off, and mistreated by those managing his career. The Korean sports daily “Sports Chosun” had Chi on the cover saying “I was a world champion treated worse than a dog.” In the article, Chi uses another animal comparison: “The bear does all the tricks and the money goes to the master,” Chi said. And then he compares himself to a victim of human trafficking: “I was a modern version of a slave.”
Now, Chi wasn’t borrowing from the wisdom of Floyd Mayweather Jr. who after being offered an HBO contract in the tens of millions of dollars got all Frederick Douglass on us. Chi actually has a point. His position on boxing in Korea and his giving up a world championship belt has created a firestorm of criticism from the media, print and broadcast both, about the business of boxing in Korea, a business that fighters like Tim Witherspoon would recognize.
The structure of people around a Korean boxer is the same as in America. There is the trainer training the fighter, the manager managing the fighter, and the promoter promoting the fighter. Except for the trainer, the function of these people is different than in America. The promoter holds all the power. He tells the manager when, where, and for how much the fighter will fight. The manager then tells the fighter what the promoter has offered. There is little to no negotiation on behalf of the fighter. The fighter has to take the promoter’s offer or leave it. For being a manager in name but a messenger in function, the manager is given 30 percent of the fighter’s purse. Clearly the power is one-sided, weighted heavily on the side of the promoter.
This kind of arrangement has led to problems before. World super flyweight and bantamweight champion Sung Kil Moon and bantamweight champion Jung Il Byun both sued to get out of their contracts, pointing to a conflict of interest with their managers not negotiating but parroting the promoter’s terms. They cited a lack of power for the fighter and the trainer.
Now, the case of Chi mirrors the situation of those two past champions. His last fight was against WBC featherweight champion Rodolfo Lopez. This fight was in Seoul and Chi boxed masterfully to regain his title. For all his pains, he wasn’t paid that much for the fight.
When asked about this, Kim said, “of course he wasn’t paid much for this fight. He was only the challenger. He could only get 100 million won [$100,000] but for his next fight he was going to get 1 billion won [$1 million]. When he became champion, he was going to make a lot of money.”
Those prices seemed fair to me. Only Chi had been quoted as saying something different. In “Sports Chosun,” he claimed he had been promised $20,000 to fight Lopez but was paid less than $10,000 for the fight. Given his injuries and his small purse, he has been unable to fight and has had trouble supporting his family.
So, I asked Kim about the article in “Sports Chosun.”
“What is in that paper isn’t true. It isn’t what Chi thinks. Some guys in K-1 started talking to Chi, getting him to believe stuff, making him feel mistreated. That’s why he says those things about boxing. That isn’t Chi in the article.”
When asked about the purses Chi claims to have received, Kim waves his hand dismissively and talks to one of the younger boxers.
I was given a chance to think.
For Chi, despite his bank account being in the red, the money isn’t the only issue. It’s about his lack of power, about his considering himself a slave. In Korea, he can’t make decisions for himself as long as the promoter holds all the power. Others including former champions Young Su Choi and Jung Il Byun have expressed an understanding for Chi’s situation and a sympathy for his frustration as he quixotically attempts to take down the boxing powers in this very conservative and Confucian society.
But for all the emotions riding high from Chi, the media, and his manager, Kim still holds out some hope that a solution can be made.
“Chi has cut off his phone and has moved out of Seoul to the countryside. Now, he has stopped training, but maybe he will box again.”
As I said goodbye and gave Kim my thanks, I felt bad for Kim, for Chi, and for Korean boxing. Chi after all had accomplished a lot with the sport and to some extent transcended being simply a Korean champion. He fought hard against Morales in America; he dismantled Michael Brodie in the U.K; and when he regained his title many believed it was finally his chance to cash in. (Sitting at ringside for the Lopez fight, I noted all the talk was about how Chi hadn’t made much money boxing.) When the Pacquiao fight seemed a probability, all in the Korean boxing community were pleased that Chi would finally get his due. Whenever Chi’s name was mentioned alongside a top featherweight or super featherweight, all boxing insiders from Korea to America approved of the match up. He had a solid reputation going for him.
Now things seem to be going against Korean boxing.
As I got to the street, I passed the gruel restaurant again. I thought of that Charles Dickens novel “Oliver Twist,” where in an orphanage, Oliver finished his meager helping of gruel got up from his seat, approached the person slopping it out, and asked for “more.” Just as my sympathies were with Oliver, so are they with Chi.
As Oliver’s request for “more” spoke about the plight of those not benefiting from the Industrial Revolution, Chi’s protest against the institution of Korean boxing makes a stand for the Korean boxer. He’s a boxer trying to free himself from the grip of the Fagans of the boxing world, those promoters running the show, dictating the terms, and not negotiating with the fighters.
So let’s hope, his protest works and with gloves on and no kicking allowed, we see “more” of Chi in the boxing ring with Kim in his corner.
But don’t count on it. I asked another boxing manager about Chi’s chances of coming back as a boxer.
“No way. He’s signing with K-1 for real money,” he said holding up his fingers in the ok sign meaning money in Korea. “He’s getting 1 billion won [$1,000,000].”
