Steve Bunce column: Night of 'mayhem and anarchy' leaves no winners for boxing

Nottingham's Leigh Wood, Belfast's Michael Conlan and London's Lawrence Okolie are all in world title fights on Saturday

Having three good world title fights in three different venues on one night is an absolute disaster for boxing.

It's about the worst thing that can happen in this sport, and I really mean that.

In Manchester, Nottingham's Leigh Wood challenges Mauricio Lara for the WBA featherweight title. In Bournemouth, Lawrence Okolie defends his WBO cruiserweight title against Chris Billam-Smith. And in Belfast, local hero Michael Conlan takes on reigning IBF featherweight champion Alberto Lopez.

You'd be happy to have three fights like this in the entire year.

You'd be delighted if you had these three fights in a couple of months.

To have them on one Saturday is quite ridiculous.

What's really amazing, if you have a look at the boxing diary in the UK, the following weekends: 3 June, empty; 17 June, empty; 24 June, empty.

All six of the men in the three world fights have all been on 5 Live in the past 12 months. These are all big fights.

We use words like unique in boxing, overused. We talk about rare, overused. We talk about incredible nights, overused. But surely this night ticks all these boxes. It's never happened before and I hope it never happens again.

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We've had clashes in the past in the UK.

We had a terrible situation in 2018 when Carl Frampton fought Josh Warrington in Manchester and Derek Chisora took on Dillian Whyte in London. Both pay-per-view fights, both on the Saturday before Christmas, 22 December. That was a disaster.

Both were sold out and both were guaranteed to be great fights, and they were great fights.

This is not even the first time this year we've had clashes and they seem to be happening more on a regular basis in recent times. But this is the first time in my lifetime we've had three world titles in three different locations in England and Northern Ireland in one night.

Who doesn't want to be in Bournemouth in the sunshine to watch Billam-Smith take on world champion Okolie at the Vitality Stadium?

Who doesn't want to be in Manchester to see if Wood can pull it off against Lara after coming so close the first time? And who in their right mind doesn't want to be in Belfast for Conlan winning a world title?

These are sell-your-granny fights, they really are. I can make a case for each of these events being monster events and they've been lumped together during a two-hour period in one night. It's madness.

How does this happen? It's a mixture of facts. All of the promoters are claiming they bagged the date first, like a kid in a playground. I don't really care who officially announced it first because behind the scenes we all knew they were bubbling. I dreaded having two of them on the same night, but three?

Wood was stopped by Mauricio Lara in a fight he was winning

I work closely with every promoter and they will all mount a strong case as to why it's not their fault. They might all be innocent, because that's the way in boxing. It's always someone else's fault. I just wish there had been some dialogue.

We don't need promoters to be friends, but we need at least some communication.

The British Boxing Board of Control of course can't do a thing. There is no official or unofficial way to have a word with the different promoters.

But this is not good, you need something in place to stop this and I hope something can be done to avoid it happening again.

For fans, it's terrible. There are hardcore fans that would have gone to each of those fights if they were on separate nights. I'm sure all these events can be sold out, but you're losing fans at the door no doubt.

Then you've got the fans watching at home. We've all seen the stuff on Twitter when there's a clash.

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Fans will be watching one fight on their laptop and another on the TV. On Saturday night you'll need to get your phone out too. That's just not realistic, is it?

The last thing I want is for this to be lauded as a great night for fans watching on laptops and phones and TV.

These are great fights but this is a night of mayhem and anarchy and even if every show sells out, that is not a justification for this mess.

I do hear there is a plan for Lopez-Conlan ringwalk to start at 21:00 before Lara-Wood at 22:30. Which would be great news if there was only two fights on. It's just so frustrating for the fans, the media and the fighters.

This is an injustice to the fighters too. All three of the cards have good undercards, none more than Terri Harper's hastily rearranged world title defence against Ivana Habazin in Manchester.

Usually, in fights like these, a star emerges. A proper star. None of the fighters involved on Saturday can claim to have the profile of an Anthony Joshua or a Katie Taylor.

But imagine if Billam-Smith survives an incredible war and stops Okolie late, but it gets lost because Conlan has been too smart for Lopez or once again Wood has fallen short?

In a normal weekend, a big world title win elevates the fighter, dominates the headlines.

But now, no matter who wins, they will not get the full credit they deserve because of the mad cluster schedule.