Maccabi Lod Boxing Gym

The old rules and explanation about the gear and attributes in amateur and professional boxing are posted on our website.

In the last march (2013) the International Boxing Association (AIBA) have published its updated competition rules.

The amateur (Olympic) boxing followers are familiar with that for last two years AIBA created boxing league named WSB, where the amateur and professional boxers compete under rules similar to those in professional boxing i.e. 10-9 round scoring, no head gear and shirts etc…

In the last two seasons of WSB, 12 teams from different countries were divided into two groups where the teams competed according to league rules as in other team sports. Each team consisted from fighters in 5 weight classes. Starting from the next season each team will have 10 weight classes with accordance to those in regular AIBA competitions. The professional boxing league is only one of the changes, in addition the AIBA plans to create professional boxing league where the rules of professional boxing will be applied, and the league will be named APB (Professional AIBA Boxing). At this moment the APB is in its preliminary stages and official information about rules and participation hasn’t been released yet.

Apart from the creation of professional league there are significant changes applied to the amateur boxing rules (the old amateur rules are available on our site). According to the old rules the ring judge wasn’t allowed to speak to or to touch fighters, when one of the fighters broke the rules, the judge had to stop the fight and the round time, and explain to the fighter with the hand signal which rule was broken. The new rules allow the ring judge to verbally warn the boxer about breaking the rules without stopping the fight, he can separate the fighters with his hands and if the judge decides to stop the fight in order to warn one of the fighters about rule breaking the round clock doesn’t stop. These above rules are the same as in the professional ring.

Another rule change is regarding stopping the fight. In the past 3 knock downs in one round or reaching 4 total in a fight will stop the fight. The new rule leaves only 3 knock downs in one round rule for stopping the fight i.e. the boxer can be knock down twice in each round and the fight won’t be automatically stopped after 4 knock downs if the judge doesn’t think that the fighter’s health is in danger.

The scoring system is also was changed. The number of ringside judges will remain to be five. Each ringside judge will get electronic controller with buttons with digits 10 to 6 for each fighter, representing the round score. The score criteria is similar as for the professional rules, the winner of the round will get 10 points and the loser will get score between 9-6. All five ringside judges will make the score at the end of the round but the computer will chose randomly the score only from 3 judges.

Another major change is the cancelation of the requirement to wear head gear in the top level competitions (A rating) for adults i.e. national, continent and world championships. The application of this rule to Olympics is pending Olympic committee approval.

Our hope is that the new rules will prevent judging errors and add to the interest in amateur boxing.