The IBF appears to be at it again, now gripping Jai Opetaia with their inconsistency in reinforcing their own rules while picking and choosing who to punish. Opetaia, who is set to face Ellis Zorro on December 23rd in the massive Saudi event featuring an array of renowned fighters, will reportedly be stripped because Zorro is his second voluntary defense, after already being exempted from fighting a mandatory challenger when he faced Jordan Thompson earlier this year.

While the IBF is free to abide by their own rules, their inability to apply this same sort of consistency to other fighters only makes them look more questionable. A good example of this is Katie Taylor, who now holds two IBF titles at lightweight and super lightweight yet has not been told to relinquish her title.

Errol Spence Jr. and Jermell Charlo have both managed to keep a hold of their titles for years without being ordered to fight any mandatory challenger. While Spence did fight Carlos Ocampo as his first mandatory title defense, he would not be mandated ever since. Charlo did not fight a single IBF mandatory challenger since first capturing the title in 2020. Their other world titles notwithstanding, there have been periods where both fighters were inactive and had not been mandated to fight anyone.

The IBF rules are clear on this matter, stating that a champion needs to make a mandatory defense within nine months of capturing a title, and upon completing this defense, they are obliged to defend their title every nine months from that point forward.

According to their own rules, Jai Opetaia should have been stripped in April of this year, nine months after he first won the IBF cruiserweight title against Mairis Briedis on July 2nd, 2022. Apparently, they gave Opetaia an exemption to fight Jordan Thompson, allowing him to face Thompson as his voluntary challenger without being forced to face his mandatory challenger, who was confirmed to be Briedis in August.

This exemption was spurred by an injury that Opetaia had suffered during his match against Briedis, which forced him to take an extended length out of the ring, eventually culminating in his return more than 14 months after he last fought Briedis.

Without context of other IBF champions having gotten away with no mandatory fights, the IBF would have been right to make their decision without question, but their handling of the Terence Crawford situation in which they stripped him after just 3 months of obtaining the IBF welterweight title against Spence to promote IBF interim champion Jaron Ennis makes everything they do and say questionable.

Now, they show similarly questionable decisions with Katie Taylor, who holds four world titles at 135 lbs and 140 lbs, even though it is not allowed by their own rules that a fighter cannot hold the same title in two different divisions.

The IBF’s credibility is only compounded by the fact they refuse to release any of these relevant updates themselves, choosing instead to rely on unknown spokespeople to relay their information, which is a likely attempt for them to escape any accountability whatsoever while controlling the narratives they put out.

It makes sense for Opetaia to be stripped after already receiving an exemption, but this does not change the fact that he should already have been stripped prior to facing Thompson, according to their own rules. Last year, IBF super featherweight champion Joe Cordina had to relinquish his title over an injury that would leave him unable to defend against a mandatory within 9 months. The same could have occurred with Opetaia in the same year when it became evident he could not defend his title against a mandatory within 9 months, yet an exception was made for him.

This pick-and-choose tendency by the IBF has only bred more dissent as they continue to be inconsistent and biased, and their blatant lack of regard for their own rules became even more apparent when their spokesperson sought to justify stripping Jai Opetaia if he fights Ellis Zorro on December 23rd.

“We’ve made it clear to Jai’s team that he cannot fight Ellis Zorro for the title. We had already given Jai an exemption to fight Jordan Thompson in his last fight, so he can’t get another exemption to fight Zorro, who does not have a world ranking,” a spokesperson from the IBF apparently said.

“In our rules, it can’t be done. He can’t have back-to-back exemptions. If we break the rules for Jai, it opens the floodgates for everyone else.

“The IBF has notified Jai’s team that he cannot fight Zorro — we’ve said his next fight has to be a mandatory against Briedis. If Jai Opetaia goes ahead and fights Zorro, he will be stripped of his IBF world title.”

Again, the IBF seems oblivious that the very fact that they grant certain fighters exemptions and then revoke them for other fighters has now led to this problem where none of their decisions can be trusted. As referenced earlier, other fighters have gotten away with needing to make no IBF mandatory defenses for years, even during bouts of clear inactivity, meaning that they could have easily looked the other way if it suited them in the case of Opetaia as Mairis Briedis, the mandatory to Opetaia, was injured at the time the IBF revealed Briedis to be the mandatory.

Now, for whatever reason, the IBF decides to look to their own rules again because Ellis Zorro appears not to be ranked high enough. It is a showcase of how their deliberate favoritism has now backfired, ironically exemplified by the unknown spokesperson himself who admitted to granting Opetaia an exemption to begin with without clarifying the exact details of why they made that decision.

Because of their own past bias and decisions based on corruption, the IBF’s current decision appears unfair to Opetaia, even though they are merely following their own rules.

If the IBF wants to regain their credibility, they can start now by enforcing their rules on every single one of their champions, starting by forcing Taylor to relinquish one of her two IBF titles similar to what the WBO has done. It is also important that they publicize their mandates from this point forward so they cannot be tied to any corruption by withholding information and then releasing them through spokespeople or third parties when it suits them.

By using an organized structure and making it clear what is allowed and not, the IBF would have been able to make their latest decision without much scrutiny. Going forward, transparency and coherence will be their assets if they want to be regarded as a serious sanctioning body, and not a laughing stock that doesn’t appear to know what they’re actually doing.