Earlier this month, AIBA President C K Wu unveiled a new programme entitled AIBA Professional Boxing (APB), to be launched in 2013, which will allow competitors to retain their Olympic eligibility despite boxing professionally without headguards while being scored by three judges.

AIBA are hopeful the sport's top professional stars such as Floyd Mayweather Junior, Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan will compete in the competition but Warren said in his column in The Sun that he was against the move and also claimed that "the proposals haven't gone down too well with members of the ABA".

The organisation has denied Warren's claims but said that they have set up a Commission to look into AIBA's APB proposal in depth.

An ABAE spokesperson told insidethegames: "The announcement by AIBA represents another step in attempting to provide a duty of care and support to boxers throughout the whole of their careers.

"The welfare of boxers is our number one priority and we would expect everyone connected with the sport to support this principle.

"Like all major changes it creates a number of significant challenges for us as an organisation and we are forming a Commission to examine the proposals in more detail in our role as the governing body for amateur boxing in England.

"We will provide a further update after the Commission has arrived at its initial conclusions."

The ABAE is still looking to heal its rift with the AIBA following the huge fall-out between the two organisations that occurred last year when Paul King, the former ABAE chief executive, mounted a controversial and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to challenge Wu for the Presidency of world boxing and then attempted to postpone the 2010 AIBA Congress in Almaty in Kazakhstan last October.

The move saw King banned from all involvement in the sport for two years and the ABAE fined 1,000 Swiss Francs (£700/$1,140).

Mark Abberley was named as the new ABAE chief executive earlier this year with a view to rebuilding relations with the governing body, while the AIBA President has also stressed that he wants to improve relations following the King fall-out as he told insidethegames that "the Amateur Boxing Association of England is a hugely important national federation to AIBA".

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