ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania – Gary Russell Jr. has proudly represented the WBC for nearly five years as its featherweight champion.

He considers the Mexico City-based sanctioning organization’s championships the most prestigious in boxing, more so than those of the IBF, IBO, WBA and WBO. Russell still completely disagrees with the WBC’s new practice of reclassifying existing world champions as “franchise” champions.

The 31-year-old Russell considers crowning franchise champions a way to allow them to avoid making mandatory title defenses, obligations Russell himself has never attempted to circumvent. Whereas Canelo Alvarez and Vasiliy Lomachenko were elevated to WBC franchise champions in the middleweight and lightweight divisions, respectively, Russell made another high-risk, low-reward, mandated defense of his 126-pound championship against Tugstsogt Nyambayar on Saturday night at PPL Center.

Russell stopped Spain’s Kiko Martinez in a tune-up bout before making that mandatory defense against Nyambayar. Nevertheless, he eventually honored the title shot the 2012 Olympic silver medalist earned by defeating Dominican contender Claudio Marrero on points in their WBC elimination match in January 2019.

His convincing victory over Nyambayar marked the third mandatory title defense Russell has made since he won the WBC featherweight title by stopping Mexico’s Jhonny Gonzalez in the fourth round of their March 2015 bout in Las Vegas. The Washington, D.C., native previously made mandatory defenses versus then-unbeaten Joseph Diaz Jr. and Oscar Escandon.

“I think that’s a way to manipulate and politics is playing a big part in that,” Russell told a group of reporters when asked about franchise champions following his victory over Nyambayar. “I think that’s a way of hiding fighters and allow fighters to pick and choose who they wanna fight, once again. You know, I think the sport of boxing is getting weak.

“You know, it’s not like it used to be back in the day. A lot of the fighters were willing to fight. Like I say, I’m a true man, at the end of the day. Any fighter say they wanna fight me, they need to put they hands up when they see me. It’s time to rumble.”

Russell (31-1, 18 KOs), of Capitol Heights, Maryland, out-classed the hard-hitting Nyambayar (11-1, 9 KOs) in a 12-round main event Showtime televised. The left-handed Russell beat Mongolia’s Nyambayar by scores of 118-110, 117-111 and 116-112. 

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.