By Jake Donovan
(Disclosure: Jake Donovan is a board member of, and official Records Keeper for, Transnational Boxing Ratings Board)
Along with everything else at stake in and relevant to the forthcoming May 2 superfight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, the long awaited bout will carry one more piece of significance: its winner will be the first recognized World welterweight champion in the eyes of the Transnational Boxing Ratings Board.
"The welterweight throne is vacant, and rightfully so," points out Springs Toledo, an award-winning boxing writer and historian, and also—along with Tim Starks of The Queensberry Rules and BoxingScene.com's own Cliff Rold—founding member of the independent ratings panel comprised entirely of writers from around the world.
The panel was formed in 2012, initially in response to the sudden decline in standards found among The Ring Ratings Panel. Beginning with its ratings launch in Oct. '12, the aforementioned trio along with their fellow chair members will recap the fights for each week and put forth a set of rankings for the remaining board to vote up over a 48-hour period prior to the site's Tuesday morning ratings updates.
In the initial round of discussion to announce the first set of rankings for the site, votes were cast for the proposed Top 10 rankings in all 17 weight classes, along with which title lineages would be honored by TBRB.
At the time, World champions were recognized in only four of the 17 divisions: light heavyweight (Chad Dawson, having dethroned Bernard Hopkins); super middleweight (Andre Ward, who had already run the tables in the Showtime Super Six World Boxing Classic); and flyweight (Toshiyuki Igarashi, whose title lineage traced all the way back to Miguel Canto in the 1970s, and whose divisional run remains the longest current unbroken championship chain).
The absence of a defined king at heavyweight and welterweight were the first to raise a few eyebrows.
BoxingScene.com, for example, has recognized Wladimir Klitschko as the World heavyweight champion, beginning in June '09 with his 9th round knockout win over Ruslan Chagaev, at the time the next highest rated fighter in the world not named Klitschko.
Not good enough, believed the TBRB team. As long as Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko were active and still cleaning out the heavyweight field, they remained the best two heavyweights in the world, with only a head-on collision determining the true king of boxing's most storied weight class.
The subsequent retirement by Vitali Klitschko following his Sept. '12 stoppage win over Manuel Charr helped open the floodgates. Alexander Povetkin eventually made his way to the #2 spot in the TBRB ratings, leading to Klitschko's points win over the then-unbeaten Russian as satsifying the needs to declare a World heavyweight king.
As far as the welterweight division goes, however, there was only one fight to fill the void.
"Neither Mayweather nor Pacquiao have a strong claim to it precisely because they haven't fought each other," points out Toledo. "That seems right, doesn't it? Even casual fans instinctively knew that neither could rightfully be crowned until we see which of them is truly the best in the division. And that can only be determined one way in a combat sport.
"Acronyms ["TBE"] don't matter --action does."
The matter was not met unanimously, and in fact sparked tremendous debate.
At the time, BoxingScene.com recognized Mayweather as the World welterweight champion, with his May '10 win over Shane Mosley filling the vacancy left behind by Mayweather himself following his initial retirment-turned-hiatus in 2008.
The logic into declaring the Mayweather-Mosley winner as champ was simple; there was a chance for a fight between #1 (Mayweather) and #2 (Pacquiao) to happen. The #2 contender (Pacquiao) opted to go in another direction, leading Mayweather to face the #3 ranked welterweight at the time, which was Mosley through means of his one-sided knockout win over Antonio Margarito.
Others around the boxing world shared that viewpoint, but it was never fully embraced by the 44-member TBRB panel (representing 16 different countries).
Given the magnitude of the May 2 event in Las Vegas, it's an easy argument to make in this case that patience was in fact a virtue.
"Mayweather-Pacquiao is an historic event that will clarify much that needs clarifying in a sport known for confusing itself and everyone else when it comes to who's who and what's what," Toledo recognizes. "The press should spotlight that angle much more than they are.
Increasingly, thinking fans are tuning out the nonsense about the belts precisely because of how loose and arbitrary the profit-driven sanctioning organizations are.
"They say "championship" and everyone rolls their eyes. We say championship and it means something very different. We say that after Mayweather and Pacquiao duke it out, boxing will almost certainly (barring a draw or an NC) finally crown the true champion of its deepest and most dangerous division, a division that has not had a champion in nearly seven years.
"Has it been worth the wait? You’re damn right it has."
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
