WBC strip Mundine of ranking for September 11 remarks

The World Boxing Council indefinitely stripped Australian Anthony Mundine of his ranking on Wednesday over controversial remarks the super middleweight made this week about the September 11 attacks on the U.S.

Mundine, a Muslim, said on Monday that the U.S. had brought the September 11 attacks upon itself. He later apologised for the comments through a statement on his website, but the damage had apparently already been done.

"The World Boxing Council read with stupefaction the statements made recently by Anthony Mundine justifying the terrorist attacks and the consequent deaths of so many innocent victims that occurred on September 11 in New York," WBC president Jose Sulaiman said in a statement.

"Mundine is currently rated in the super middleweight division and, therefore, the WBC announces that he will be sanctioned by dropping him indefinitely from the WBC ratings, since such statements are unbelievable and intolerable and seriously hurt world society and boxing.

"The WBC will not tolerate the utilisation of a position in boxing to make such absurd and denigrating public statements," added Sulaiman.

Mundine, a former rugby player ranked 26th by the WBC, is scheduled to fight International Boxing Federation super middleweight champion Sven Ottke in Dortmund, Germany on December 1.

IBF officials said that title fight would go ahead as scheduled but they reserved the right to strip Mundine of the title at a later date, should he win it, if he repeats his controversial statements.