By Mark Staniforth

Alexander Povetkin was crowned world heavyweight champion last Saturday night in a nonsensical piece of politicking which did nothing but tarnish the glory of the legitimate title-holders who have gone before.

Povetkin beat Ruslan Chagaev on points in Erfurt, Germany, to win the WBA crown rendered vacant because the WBA had decided to 'upgrade' its reigning champion Wladimir Klitschko to 'super-champion' status.

Not only that, but Povetkin is now slated to defend his spurious title against Evander Holyfield, who continues to fly in the face of medical advice by continuing in his misguided quest to win back a so-called heavyweight crown.

The saddest thing about this farce is that it does those involved no good at all. Povetkin is a classy, unbeaten fighter who could have fought Klitschko, but who will now receive nothing but scorn for winning a title by default.

The sport itself certainly cannot benefit: it was bad enough having any number of alphabet bodies crowning their own world champions, let alone a single governing body proclaiming two.

The only clear beneficiaries of such a move are the WBA themselves, who will have pocketed a sizeable sanctioning fee from the Povetkin-Chagaev contest, as they will when Klitschko next puts his 'super' title on the line.

There are other related issues sweeping the sport. The world's commonly regarded number one featherweight is Cuba's Yuriorkis Gamboa, who is unbeaten and won the WBA's nine-stone title in 2009.

Gamboa was upgraded to 'super-champion' for his fight with Orlando Salido in September last year, freeing up the regular WBA featherweight title to be won by Jonathan Victor Barros - a fighter Gamboa had beaten six months earlier.

Barros still holds his WBA featherweight title to this day. Gamboa, however, will go into his next fight with Daniel Ponce de Leon with nothing, having been stripped of his 'super-champion' status apparently over a missing sanctioning fee.

When we look to prod scorn at boxing's sanctioning bodies, the last people we usually turn to are the big-name promoters who are accustomed to employing all kinds of political machinations to get title shots for their fighters.

But the WBA's dual farces have so exasperated the veteran promoter Bob Arum that he admits he has given up on the routine route of writs and court cases because such alphabet belts have simply become not worth the hassle.

Gamboa's fight against the tremendously exciting but flawed Ponce de Leon could be one of the best tear-ups of 2011. So in many ways it is fitting that it is set to take place as a 12-round non-title contest.

"They say he didn't pay the sanctioning fee," said Arum of Gamboa this week. "This whole thing is getting to be a nonsense, these sanctioning bodies. Who can waste time on following it all?

"They all do everything for their own business. So they thought it was in their best business interest to take the title away. So who is going to waste the time to go to court to try to fight it?"

Perhaps the upcoming farce between Povetkin and Holyfield, and all the blustering which will come with it from Holyfield, will mark a nadir for the alphabet bodies from which they will never recover.

It is ironic that if boxing is to finally rid itself of their clutches it will be down to the big promoters who did so much to put the sport in such an unseemly mess in the first place, but who now have a chance to be hailed its saviours.

Mark Staniforth covers boxing for Press Association Sport