THE days of national boxing champions dying broke could soon be a thing of the past, with television dates no longer deciding how often they fight.

THE days of national boxing champions dying broke could soon be a thing of the past, with television dates no longer deciding how often they fight.

Boxing South Africa, the sport's mother body, has been lenient on promoters, allowing them to stage title defences according to the lucrative television dates made available by broadcasters.

But from July 1 BSA will strictly enforce the title defence regulation of the Boxing Act. This stipulates that a champion should defend against any of the rated boxers on BSA's ratings list within 90 days of making a voluntary or mandatory defence, subject to the challenge being approved by BSA.

"We have not been able to enforce this law because of television dates," BSA acting chief executive Loyiso Mtya said yesterday.

"We will start enforcing this law from July 1 with or without television dates."

Promoters have relied on the money from broadcast rights to stage national championship fights. But now they will have to find other sponsors if the fights fall outside television dates.

The SABC and SuperSport are the only broadcasting houses that allocate television dates to promoters.

The national broadcaster allocates dates according to the number of national champions each promoter has in his stable.

The criteria used by SuperSport remains unclear. SABC pays around R120000 for broadcast rights while SuperSport pays just under R200000.