Finally! Canelo isn't...

18 months is too much leeway time. It's a shame to end a line that went back to Hopkins, if they actually make Golovkin Canelo, I'm sure Canelo will be ranked number 2 and that will reestablish/continue the line. If it doesn't get made I'm glad Canelo-Lemiuex won't be for the lineal, though otherwise it should be a fun and good fight. Since Golovkin already beat the #2 in Jacobs, I doubt that they would require a rematch if Canelo does go with Lemiuex, but who knows.

I don't know why Golovkin fans are happy, if Golovkin beats Canelo in September he still won't be lineal now. :rofl: Golovkin is the MW champ RIGHT NOW, by virtue of beating the legit #2 (Jacobs), seeing as Canelo had vacated, IMO. Even if you didn't consider Jacobs #2, once Canelo returns to 160, he would be either #1 or #2, or possibly #3. In any case, the winner of GGG v Canelo in Sept would be universally recognized as the MW CHAMP, lineal, unified, whatever. Anybody who says otherwise is just being a troll (hi Mirko) **** as to the long drawn out discussion of what is lineal, and whether the Ring, or TBRB recognizes it --- blah blah blah. If you know enough about boxing, you can decide who is really the champ in a division. Why should I give up by decisions to the Ring, or the TBRB for that matter. I recognize GGG, once he beat Jacobs. Canelo had vacated once he fought Smith and didn't schedule a valid MW defense w/in 18 months of winning the title (I don't consider Khan at 155 a valid defense)

I don't know why Golovkin fans are happy, if Golovkin beats Canelo in September he still won't be lineal now. :rofl: because even though there is a valid argument that GGG is not "lineal", there is no longer a valid argument that someone else is.

Damn, this argument has entered day 3, proper war of attrition And nobody has insulted anybody or brought race into it. That's a damn miracle for this place nowadays. I wish all the arguments that went on here were like this one.. I'm withdrawing now doe. I realise I misunderstood what original zero was saying due to my knowledge of Ring magazine policy being out of date.

Wrong. That used to be how it worked years ago, but that's not how they do it anymore. Golden Boy Promotions bought them and stopped recognizing lineal champions. Ring made up a bunch of rules and started crowning their own champions that had nothing to do with lineal. Ring's championship policy makes no mention of lineal whatsoever. I used to subscribe to Ring magazine and had a copy sent to my local news agent in the UK every month for years, but I let that lapse before GBP took over, and I haven't read a copy since then, just articles that were linked to boxing sites. I thought they still recognised lineal champs and that the Rings recognition of Canelo as lineal MW champ was what we were arguing about here! Clearly, I've been misunderstanding what you were saying and that's why we've been going round in circles. :lol1:

Damn, this argument has entered day 3, proper war of attrition

There is no lineage on ring titles, no matter how hard ring tries... ring doesnt own lineal and never will , period... Nobody owns lineal titles, that's why fans can argue about who the lineal champs are. That's also why I don't see them as having any real meaning or purpose, except to boxing history writers.

not true at all man...Roy was ring champ but never lineal champ Manny was labeled lineal after Bradley 3 but has never been ring champ at 147 What I'm saying is that if the Ring recognise a fighter as lineal champ they will award him their title belt, so they couldn't have both a Ring Champ and a lineal champ recognised by the Ring in the same division ... correct? I don't know what happened with Manny at 147, but if I remember right, the lineal LHW champ was a Polish guy called Darius something or other .. I don't remember his surname - but the Ring stopped recognising him for some reason, maybe because he wasn't fighting any top ranked contenders.

There is no lineage on ring titles, no matter how hard ring tries... ring doesnt own lineal and never will , period...

I keep telling you mate, the Ring champ is whoever the Ring recognises as lineal champ ... they are one and the same thing. The fact that you don't agree with the Ring's criteria for recognising lineal champs does not alter the fact that the Ring do recognise lineal champs. It would be insane for me to say that BJS is not the real MW champ, so that means he can't be the WBO MW champ. BJS IS the WBO MW champ, irrespective of whether I think he should or shouldn't be! Recognise Canelo as what? I'll give you a clue .. two words, first word starts with L and the second word starts with C. That's because the Ring don't have mandatory challengers for their titles. A mandatory challenger is a specific fighter who the champ is mandated to fight or forfeit his title. The Ring champ has a mandatory obligation to defend against a top 5 ranked fighter, but that's not the same as having a mandatory challenger. GGG was Canelo's WBC mando, and Canelo didn't have the option of fighting Lemieux or Andy Lee instead. It was Golovkin or vacate. not true at all man...Roy was ring champ but never lineal champ Manny was labeled lineal after Bradley 3 but has never been ring champ at 147

No. Ring recognizes him as Ring champ. The Ring title has nothing to do with the lineal title. If it was a lineal title, they would have stopped recognizing him when he left the division and said he wasn't a middleweight champion anymore. I keep telling you mate, the Ring champ is whoever the Ring recognises as lineal champ ... they are one and the same thing. The fact that you don't agree with the Ring's criteria for recognising lineal champs does not alter the fact that the Ring do recognise lineal champs. It would be insane for me to say that BJS is not the real MW champ, so that means he can't be the WBO MW champ. BJS IS the WBO MW champ, irrespective of whether I think he should or shouldn't be! No, according to the long established criteria of tracking lineal champions, TBRB did exactly what you are supposed to do when somebody leaves a division and says they aren't the champion anymore. It is Ring breaking yet another tradition by continuing to recognize Canelo Which they are doing because Canelo's promoter owns the magazine. Recognise Canelo as what? I'll give you a clue .. two words, first word starts with L and the second word starts with C. That's a mandatory defense. Fight who we say you have to fight or we will strip you. Which is the exact opposite of how a lineal title works. Further, you don't even know the Ring's rules (probably because Canelo's promoter makes up the rules as he goes along), but it's not the top 10. It's the top 5. But not necessarily the top 5 of your division. The top 5 of any division. So Canelo could have defended at 155 against welterweights forever under Ring rules. That's because the Ring don't have mandatory challengers for their titles. A mandatory challenger is a specific fighter who the champ is mandated to fight or forfeit his title. The Ring champ has a mandatory obligation to defend against a top 5 ranked fighter, but that's not the same as having a mandatory challenger. GGG was Canelo's WBC mando, and Canelo didn't have the option of fighting Lemieux or Andy Lee instead. It was Golovkin or vacate.

If Ring magazine calls a Honda Civic a reptile, that doesn't make a Honda Civic a reptile. That's not how words work. But again, that's not how words work. The Ring's criteria makes it very clear that Ring titles are not lineal titles. They strip fighters for not fighting mandatories. A vacancy can be filled by #2 fighting #5. Both of these policies completely spit in the face of what a lineal title is. Ring could decide to recognize a fighter as a cucumber, but that doesn't make Canelo a vegetable. Ring does not have the authority to change the meaning of words. Words mean what they mean. Words mean whatever people accept them as meaning, and that can change over time. I can't figure out where you are coming from here though. The Ring still recognise Canelo as lineal MW champ, and he hasn't lost or retired, so I would say the Ring are using your criteria there. TBRB stopped recognising Canelo because of something he said in an interview. According to your criteria, they shouldn't have done that, but you are approving TBRB and criticising the Ring? The Ring don't actually have mandos for their lineal titles, btw, just a requirement that the lineal champ should fight somebody in their top 10 rankings within a given time period. Personally, I think both TBRB and the Ring should have withdrawn recognition from Canelo when he refused to fight GGG and gave "I'm not a MW" as his reason.

that's not how words work. it'd be like if i awarded the lineal title to whoever had the biggest dick. that isn't how lineal works, so if that's my criteria, it isn't a lineal title. I don't understand what you mean by "that's not how words work". Whether you agree with the Ring's criteria or not, it's a fact that the Ring award their world title belts to the fighters they recognise as lineal champs. And here we have the problem with the whole concept of lineal titles in a nutshell .. no objective definition of what those criteria are or should be. The man who beat the man doesn't work unless everybody agrees who The Man is, and how long he should carry on being The Man without fighting and beating legit challengers to his title. A title you can retain forever by beating nobody but bums, or by not fighting anybody at all and not retiring either is a meaningless title, imo.

to keep track of the man who beat the man. no different than when the lineal chess title and fide title were split. Anybody who cares enough about that can look at the record books and make their own lineal title list. Why worry about who the Ring, TBRB, etc, are recognising?

the road to hell is paved with good intentions. you defeat the entire purpose of a lineal title when you start trying to enforce arbitrary rules. the champion is the champion until he loses, leaves the division or retires. period. So could Canelo defend against a string of welterweights at 155 and remain MW champion? Khan, then Thurman, then Garcia, and on and on. TBRB already has rules in place - I just think they need to be updated. There must be rules. You say that a champion remains champ until he leaves the division -- isnt that a rule? And how do you determine if a champ leaves the division? According to both TBRB & the Ring, Canelo didnt leave MW when he fought for a title at 154. Because he didnt violate any of their rules.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions. you defeat the entire purpose of a lineal title when you start trying to enforce arbitrary rules. the champion is the champion until he loses, leaves the division or retires. period. What is the purpose of a lineal title?

ring magazine, which is no longer impartial and is owned by a promoter, started instituting rules that had NOTHING TO DO WITH LINEAL. for instance, creating top five mandatories, from any division and stripping fighters for not facing those mandatories. which is the 100% opposite of what a lineal champion is. golden boy promotions can't strip showtime's fighter of his "lineal" title to prop up HBO's pay-per-view. that's ridiculous. meanwhile golden boy's fighter can keep his middleweight title because he fought a top welterweight contender. it makes no sense at all. golden boy is making up the rules as they go along and the rules have nothing to do with the lineal title. fans need to realize that ring & lineal are no longer one and the same. they have nothing to do with each other at this point. the ring's most respected journalists quit in protest and the spirit of the ring title lives on with the TBRB title they created to replace it. TBRB isn't perfect, but it does strive to stick to the core tenets of lineal. ring does not. ring in fact blatantly violates the core tenets of the lineal title. Some fans don't realise that the Ring championship belts are awarded to whoever the Ring recognises as lineal champ. Personally, I think that lineal titles are irrelevant and serve no purpose other than to give hardcore fans something else to argue about. Say what you like about the alphabet boys, but nobody can argue about who their champions actually are. After the WBC ordered Canelo to fight GGG or vacate, he didn't have the option to just ignore them and still carry on calling himself the WBC MW champion, the way he did with the lineal.

Ring is pretty good on some things. But their handling of Canelo demonstrates that they cant be trusted when it comes to GBP fighters. I agree that TBRB is the best authority. I think they may want to take a look at their rules and be a little more strict with how often a champ needs to defend.

I think I'll go with original zero on this. If it's about the belts, he knows the score. I just stated the Ring magazine's policy on lineal champs.. whether he thinks they should have that policy is another matter.

but ring policy completely violates the tenets of the lineal title. it's like saying i have a policy to recognize a golf cart as lineal champion. The golf cart would have as much of a legit claim to the lineal MW title as Canelo Alvarez.