To relive those 15-round boxing fights, we must go back to 1982, when the last fight with this high number of rounds was held. This ended in absolute tragedy. Duk Koo Kim lost his life after being KO’d in the last round against Ray Mancini.
The WBA decided that title fights should only be 12 rounds, and fortunately the other organizations followed suit. Studies showed that the brain gets more shattered when you’re melted, so those last three rounds were a danger to the health of the fighters
The change was not well received by purists of the box at that time, it took many years for people to get used to it, but eventually they did adapt.
Gilberto Mendoza, president of the WBA, confessed that his organization would be contemplating moving from 12 rounds to 15. This surprised many and opinions were not long in coming.
Turkey does not want this to happen
In Ring Magazine,Turki Alalshikh, one of the most influential figures in boxing in the last year, spoke about the possibility of returning to 15 rounds in fights:
I don’t support this idea in any way. It’s bad for a boxer’s health and I would never be in favor of fights being repeated over 15 rounds. In my opinion, even a 12-round fight could be too much for a boxer’s health, but 15 rounds is out of the question. A 15-round fight should never be allowed to take place
The reality is that it is quite surprising that Turki considers 12 rounds to be a lot. If he has already included AI as a trial judge, we should not be surprised if at some point he wants to reduce the number of rounds. The truth is that this issue of 15 rounds made everyone consider, the fans would gain more spectacle, but the risk of an incident in a ring would be very high
In this case, let’s hope they don’t go up to 15, the most important thing is the health of those who get into the ring
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