The current holder of the IBF lightweight title, Ukrainian fighter Vasyl Lomachenko, is vast approaching the date of May 12th which will make it a year since he last fought and won his IBF belt. For reasons that can only be speculated upon, the IBF has yet to strip Lomachenko of his title considering their rules should have seen him defend the IBF belt in February, according to their own rules.

The IBF’s rules are ironclad when it comes to dictating the expectations of every champion, though the IBF itself has not often been too consistent with their own rules. Though the sanctioning body has a reputation for being stringent due to past decisions where they appeared to enforce the rules, many of the IBF’s decisions have also been questionable due to their tendency to pick and choose when to be consistent.

Recent events would prove this, with current IBF cruiserweight (200 lbs) champion Jai Opetaia (27-0, 21 KO’s) falling victim to the IBF’s stringency due to choosing to fight a non-top 15 ranked fighter in Ellis Zorro. Having been ordered to face mandatory contender at the time, Latvian former world champion Mairis Briedis, the IBF maintained that they would not sanction Opetaia’s bout against Zorro as they had already given him an exemption to face Jordan Thompson in a voluntary defense.

The IBF stood strong on the principle of Opetaia needing to fullfill his duties to face a mandatory challenger… but then failed to take into account Briedis was injured at the time and couldn’t be faced promptly, all while Opetaia had already reached an agreement to face Briedis.

With the opportunity to earn good money while remaining active on a Riyadh Season card, his choice was far from egregious and understandable given the circumstances, yet the IBF doubled on their intent to enforce the rules. Opetaia would vacate his title eventually prior to facing Ellis Zorro (18-2, 7 KO’s), though this same title would be made available during Opetaia’s bout against Briedis in February of 2024.

As usual with the IBF, their mistakes would go relatively unnoticed due to their timely intervention of introducing the vacant IBF 200-pound title in the Opetaia-Briedis match. In fact, that move was likely a genius stroke by the organization to protect their reputation; by portraying themselves as stringent by citing their stance on no back-to-back exemptions, while also depicting themselves as fair by making the IBF title available for Opetaia to win against Briedis.

Yet exceptions were made for other fighters when it suited the sanctioning body, speculatively due to their higher name recognition, which would equal them having higher earnings that the IBF could profit from due to their policy to take a 3% cuts from fight purses ― a policy that has been adopted by the other main sanctioning bodies.

Errol Spence Jr. remains perhaps the most clearest example of this, having only had one mandatory title defense when he defended his IBF welterweight (147 lbs) title against Carlos Ocampo (37-3, 25 KO’s) in 2018, only to hold on to the title for roughly five years without being ordered to fight a single IBF mandatory.

Then there’s Jermell Charlo, who won the IBF super welterweight (154 lbs) title in 2020, gained exemptions for unification fights with Brian Castano in 2021 and 2022 ― that culminated in him becoming undisputed in the second fight, only to spend almost two years being inactive without a hint from the IBF as to when he would be ordered to face a mandated challenger.

Only when they finally ordered him to face current IBF 154-pound champion Bakhram Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KO’s) in 2024 did the title switch hands as it became vacant and eventually fell into the hands of Murtazaliev.

These seemingly innocuous details are core to understanding the IBF’s inconsistenty when we examine one of their rules which dictates when a IBF champion should defend their titles:

A common tactic used by sanctioning body to explain the absence of an order for a champion and mandatory to face each other is to point out when a fighter has multiple world titles and therefore faces obligations from other sanctioning bodies.

However, both Spence and Charlo, who had multiple titles, were also not ordered by other sanctioning bodies to face their respective mandatories, painting a clear picture of an environment where accountability is virtually non-existent.

This brings us to Vasyl Lomachenko (18-3, 12 KO’s), the latest beneficiary of the IBF’s selective stringency. As per the rules referenced earlier, Lomachenko should have defended his IBF lightweight (135 lbs) title somewhere this year in February after winning it on May 12th in 2024.

The IBF’s rules couldn’t be more clear than this.

“Each Champion so recognized by the IBF in his respective weight class from Mini Flyweight to Cruiserweight shall mandatorily defend his Championship within nine (9) months after its acquisition by him in a contest scheduled for twelve (12) rounds against a leading available contender as designated by the Championships Chairman“, the IBF’s rule 5.B clearly states.

In other words, once a fighter becomes a IBF champion, they must defend it against a mandatory contender within nine months. Lomachenko is now roughly over three months overdue for a mandatory title defense after exceeding the IBF’s deadline for defending it in February, yet Lomachenko continues to remain the IBF champion.

Even in the scenario the IBF would do exactly what their rules dictate and strip Lomachenko due to not facing a mandatory, their own role in not ordering him to face anybody is a flagrant mistake on their part and signifies their own inconsistency and potential bias.

And as always, it is exactly these mistakes that they continuously manage to not be held liable for, which altogether sums up the boxing industry perfectly, and leaves little room for denying that corruption has, and will likely be, pervasive for some time to come.