WBC prepares mandatory retirement plans for boxers
The World Council seeks to introduce mandatory savings and financial education for fighters.
The sound of the final bell does not mark the end of a career. It marks the beginning of another stage for which boxing has never been prepared. For decades, the industry excelled at producing champions, lucrative purses and unforgettable nights, but it was negligent in supporting its stars once their bodies stopped responding and the contracts disappeared.
This is why the World Boxing Council (WBC) has taken a progressive step in the lives of fighters. By 2026, the organisation intends to require any boxer competing under its sanction to have a retirement savings fund built up while they are still active. It will not be a symbolic fee but a structural condition for remaining in the circuit.
The idea emerges from a long archive of cases in which boxers have fallen into financial ruin, leaving them destitute. The sport has accumulated far too many stories in which a world title offered no future. Víctor Rabanales lost part of his fortune after becoming entangled, according to his own testimony, in a fraudulent scheme linked to an alleged land purchase on the slopes of the Popocatépetl volcano in central Mexico.
Rubén Olivares outlived his legendary status with debts and financial problems that forced him to sell his championship belts at a flea market in Mexico City. Mike Tyson ended up declaring bankruptcy after handling sums that seemed beyond the reach of human error. Different stories, the same emptiness. Money without a safety net, success without financial literacy, retirement without a plan.
“We have a top priority for 2026: the boxers’ retirement plan. Every boxer needs a financial retirement plan to compete for the WBC,” explained WBC President Mauricio Sulaimán in a video he shared before the organisation’s annual convention.
The project promoted by the WBC includes mandatory savings, financial education programmes and certified products designed specifically for boxers, in a fragmented industry with no unions and where each career advances without a common structure.
“We understand that boxing is a fragmented industry. Boxers belong to different promoters and representatives; there is no union,” Sulaimán explained. “And to have a retirement plan, you have to save money; it does not just fall from the sky.”
The only solid institutional precedent can be found in California. Since 1980, the state has operated the Professional Boxers Pension Fund, a public programme that this year paid benefits to 33 boxers totalling 531,000 dollars, the highest figure since formal payments began in 1999.
The California fund requires 75 rounds fought in the state and a minimum level of sustained activity. It is strictly technical, devoid of romanticism and limited by decades of poor communication. Yet it has demonstrated something that international boxing is only now beginning to acknowledge: retirement can no longer be a personal anecdote. It requires rules, monitoring and collective will.
“We are trying to find a way to teach as many boxers as possible how to do it. It is a problem we see in all sports, athletes who made a lot of money in a short time and then lost it,” Sulaimán added.
The WBC has not yet announced the specific savings plans that boxers will have, nor when they will be able to access their funds. Late last year, former champion Billy Dib presented a programme to help fighters secure their financial future after their careers end. The WBC has stated that it will work with financial institutions to offer certified products specifically designed for boxers.
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More details will be available at the Annual Convention to be held in Thailand, which begins next week.
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