IBF Rejects Ebanie Bridges' Mandatory Exemption Request, Enforces Shannon O'Connell Showdown

To be the best, you have to beat the best.

You would think that this is a pretty simple, cut and dried thought process adopted by a valiant competitor looking to back up their tough talk by testing their mettle and proving his or her worth like any true champion should. Think again.

Anyone with the most fleeting familiarity with the fight game knows all too well that among the many who spout this mantra, some will go to far-flung lengths and personal expense to avoid facing the most credible challenge to their perceived supremacy.

Case in point, Ebanie Bridges. The IBF bantamweight titleholder was informed by the sanctioning body in late July that she was being given no option but to face mandatory challenger ‘Shotgun’ Shannon O’Connell by the end of September. At the end of last week, Bridges filed for an exemption, requesting that she first be permitted to make a voluntary defense against a handpicked opponent. But the IBF has stood its ground and announced late last night that they have formally refused Ebanie’s appeal.

Thankfully for O’Connell, her persistence and sacrifice have paid dividends, and the hugely anticipated all-Aussie IBF bantamweight title showdown with Bridges will happen come hell or highwater.  

Ebanie’s views on the matter have been evasive and shifted perceptibly from day to day, the cagey champion giving contradictory accounts to different news outlets. First, Bridges defiantly stated that Shannon is “a nobody” and that accepting the challenge does nothing for her own career advancement. Then came a complete turnaround, the ‘Blonde Bomber’ saying that she is more than willing to take the fight, when it became quite clear that it was inevitable anyway. Only for Ebanie, and her promoter Eddie Hearn, to reverse course yet again.

“They also said that I said I was happy to wait until March (the IBF’s original deadline for Bridges to make her mandatory defense),” declared O’Connell, “but I said that before they ordered the fight, so that’s just irrelevant.”

With September 6 deemed by the IBF to be the stop point of the negotiation period, if Eddie Hearn and No Limit Boxing’s Matt Rose, who represents Shannon O’Connell, cannot come to terms by day’s end, it goes to a purse bid from there.  

“It’s just hard to know at this point with it all so up in the air,” sighed Shannon. In the meantime, she is training like a woman possessed and rallying behind the fact that there is now more reason than ever to remain optimistic. “I love that things aren’t going to plan for them.”