By Joe Harrison
For many years, the heavyweight division has been the most prestigious weight division in boxing. Yet, there hasn’t been a unified champion since Lennox Lewis retired three years ago. After Vitali Klitschko retired last year, the heavyweight division appeared to be on the verge of hitting rock bottom.
Today, there is only a large group of old timers such as Evander Holyfield, Oliver McCall, and James Toney. There are also the choke-artists such as Dominick Guinn, Audley Harrison, and Owen Beck. We would also like to ignore the most boring boxers in Chris Byrd, John Ruiz, and Hasim Rahman. Finally, there are also the eastern Europeans, none of whom can claim to be the legitimate heavyweight champion of the world.
We’ll disregard the heavyweight division for a moment. The bottom line, it’s the super welterweights (154 pounds) who rule the boxing ring today, as well as the welterweights (147 pounds) and middleweights (160 pounds). Some of this year’s biggest fights have taken place within these weight divisions. Those fights involved Shane Mosley beating Fernando Vargas twice, and Oscar De La Hoya destroying Ricardo Mayorga. There was also Carlos Baldomir outclassing both Zab Judah and Arturo Gatti, and that controversial draw between the WBC and WBO middleweight champ Jermain Taylor and the defensive specialist Winky Wright.
Other than De La Hoya and Mosley, the super welterweight division has other draws like Kassim Ouma, Vernon Forrest, Roman Karmazin, and title-holders Cory Spinks and Jose Rivera. Also, while the middleweight division provides Sam Soliman and Arthur Abraham, the welterweight division has Ricky Hatton, Antonio Margarito, and today’s best pound-for-pound boxer, Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Let’s examine what is taking place in boxing's best divisions.
Super Welterweight:
It wasn’t long ago that Ricardo Mayorga, Alejandro Garcia, Roman Karmazin, and Daniel Santos ruled this division. Within the last 13 months, each of those fighters have been defeated. Now, it is Oscar De La Hoya, Jose Rivera, Cory Spinks, and Sergei Dzindziruk who are in charge. Plus, Shane Mosley has rebounded from his two losses to Winky Wright in 2004. However, he is considering moving down to welterweight, and may even face Floyd Mayweather Jr. early next year. Ike Quartey still has what it takes to fight the best in the division, but recently lost a highly controversial decision to Vernon Forrest. Kassim Ouma is also looking to get back into the championship picture.
Welterweight:
With former undisputed champ Zab Judah losing to both Carlos Baldomir and Floyd Mayweather Jr, the unified titles were split apart. Baldomir earned the WBC title, Mayweather earned the IBF title, and the WBA title was handed to its interim champion, Luis Collazo.
Since then, Ricky Hatton has defeated Collazo, and Mayweather has been stripped of the IBF title. In the meantime, Antonio Margarito continues to have no problem defending his WBO title. There are also names such as Mark Suarez, Joshua Clottey, and Carlos Quintana looking to hit the championship scene. Luis Collazo and Kermit Cintron are anxious to get another shot at a world championship.
Middleweight:
It seems obvious that today’s top middleweights are Jermain Taylor or Winky Wright.
On the other hand, we still have two other very capable champions in Arthur Abraham (IBF) and Javier Castillejo (WBA). Plus, Edison Miranda should make quite an impact on the division if he defeats Arthur Abraham on August 19th.
Fernando Vargas has expressed taking part in the middleweight division as well. Although he didn’t look very convincing against Shane Mosley in his last two bouts, he does hold a win over the current WBA champ, Javier Castillejo.
Heavyweight:
Basically, if Oleg Maskaev beats Hasim Rahman for the WBC title on Aug. 12th, each of the four main sanctioning bodies will have champions from Eastern Europe (even though Maskaev is a U.S citizen now). As a matter of fact, these men already met back in 1999, when Maskaev floored Rahman in the 10th round. Will it be revenge or repeat?
As for the other champions, WBA champ Nikolai Valuev of Russia faces Monte Barrett in October and the IBF champ Wladimir Klitschko of Ukraine fights Shannon Briggs in November. The WBO champ is Sergei Liakhovich of Belarus, who originally planned on fighting Kevin McBride this autumn, but is now trying to lure Klitschko into a unification match. Apparently, Rahman is trying to lure Klitschko into a unification match as well. Both match-ups would be very intriguing.
Overall, the heavyweight division has a lot of work to do if it wants to get back to the popularity level it once possessed. Unifying the titles would be a tremendous start and it’s something that should have occurred once Lennox Lewis retired. Until that happens, we can still depend on names like Oscar De La Hoya and Shane Mosley to continue enchanting boxing fans everywhere with various displays of skill and talent.
On top of that, other big names in the super welterweight division also have the options of either moving up to middleweight or down to welterweight to take on other big names. With the possibilities of Mosley or De La Hoya facing Floyd Mayweather Jr, we could have some of the biggest fights ever. If Mayweather does indeed move up to super welterweight and take on IBF champ Cory Spinks, we could have another fabulous super welterweight bout.