Salandy can’t fight without permission of boxing promoters

SIPARIA teenager Giselle Salandy cannot defend her Ibero regional boxing championship without the expressed permission of promoter Buxo Potts and his associates.

This was made emphatically clear yesterday by Potts, an international matchmaker who together with Fitzroy Richards and Cecil Forde staged the bout last November when Salandy defeated Colombian Paola Rojas to win the female welterweight crown. Potts is claiming his promotion syndicate holds the rights for a Salandy defence within three months of her winning the title failing which they have exercised an option to put in a first bid to stage a bout to fill the vacant championship. Yesterday Potts main-tained that he is going ahead with plan to have another Trinidadian, Giselle Martin, fight an opponent picked by the Women’s International Boxing Association (WIBA) for the Ibero crown in August in Curacao. Potts refuted rumours that Salandy will be defending her crown shortly in St Maarten saying Curtis Joseph, the new manager of the 16-year-old, cannot pro-mote her without his permission. “He most work with us or buy out the franchise which we currently hold,” insisted Potts yesterday. “Richards spent at least $120,000 to get Salandy from zero to Ibero champion.

The syndicate also put out US $20,000 to stage the championship fight last year. And we paid $14,000 to get her a special licence to fight in Curacao,” said Potts. He said Salandy would not have been put in this circumstance had her handlers ac-cepted the Govern-ment’s offer of a $10,000 a month sti-pend made late last year when questions arose about her inability to get a licence to fight professionally in Trinidad and Tobago because she was under the age of 17. “They thought they could have received offers of big bucks. But it never materialised because she was about eight fights away from a world championship bid and needed to be promoted more before commanding sizeable purses,” said Potts. The former jockey said he warned Joseph about the implications of rejecting the state’s offer which he said would have kept Salandy in school while providing op-portunities for her to train and keep fit until she could obtain a licence to fight in front of her home crowd.

Potts reiterated that he was not against Salandy personally and maintained she is a great talent in the ring and will do Trinidad and Tobago proud on the international stage. “I love her as a daughter of the soil who is a very talented boxer. But we must play by the rules since we have a contract to fulfill. Our personal feelings and emotions must not get into the way,” said Potts. He said as far as he had investigated, Sa-landy was still listed as the Ibero champion but the fact  remained he had the option of organising for Martin to tackle a WIBA opponent for the crown within the next two months. He said the only way these plans can be changed is if Salandy’s handlers come to the table and make arrangements with him and his associates and settle the matter amicably. “If she proceeds to fight without our sanction we will have no choice but take legal action to get our just due,” said Potts.