Should we stop referring to fighters as champions until they Unify or become Lineal?

This. Title holders vs Champions. Champions are generally your unified title holders and/or lineal champs. Right now there are surprisingly few champions. It's actually depressing if you dig into it. Take a look: Heavyweight - no champion, only title holders (Joshua/Wilder/Parker). CW - no true champion, only title holders which will soon lead to a true champion (Usyk/Gassiev) thanks to this awesome tournament. Best division in boxing as far as delivering to the sport & fans. LHW - no champ, only title olders since Ward retired. Kovslev/Stevenson could possibly get there if they actually fight but hopefully some young guys take them. out. Stevenson is technology lineal champion but can anyone truly call him champion without ever fighting Wars, Kovalev or even Hopkins when he was in the mix? No. No they cannot. SMW - no champion. MW - Obviously Golovkin is the bonafide Champion. Sure, Canelo got a gift draw, but Golovkin cleaned out the entire division unifying all the belts but one that was hiding out in the UK and of course everyone, even thr hardcore Mexican fans know deep inside their heart Golovkin beat Canelo, even if they won't admit it publically they know, and it hurts their pride. Canelo could potentially get a gift decision in his rematch since GGG is like 45 years old now, but that doesn't change who the real champion is right now. WW - Title holders, no champ. Thurman vs Spence will settle that if/when Thurman finally feels Spence is "worthy" enough to fight him, for now he's clearly trying to delay the pain & suffering Spence will provide him with as long as possible. JW - Crawford is a champ due to unifying but he really should be fighting Garcia instead of Jeff Horn but that's our wonderful boxing politics in action (not to say Horn is a bad fight just sayin). LW - title holders, no champ. JLW - Lomachenko is a bonafide champion. Very simple here. FW - no champion, only title holders JFW - no champion, only title holders. Rigondeaux is still technically lineal champ I believe however. Strange situation there too. BW - no champ. Well, kinda strange situation with Yamanaka who lost to Nery who failed a drug test but the loss still counts so we'll see what happens. JBW - no champ. Inoue could get there but he'll probably move up, we'll see. Flyweight - no champ Junior Flyweight - Ryoichi Taguchi has two titles unified so you can say he's a champ since no one else in the division is unified (two other title holders). So there you go. In all of boxong we can say there are at most 4 actual champions, with another on the horizon (Usyk/Gassiev). In all of boxing I believe there are just TWO actual lineal champions (not just the fake The Ring "lineal belt" but actual lineages - Adonis Stevenson (from Dawson) and Rigondeaux (beating Donaire). That's it currently. Very depressing. you are all over the place bro. what about thurman? he is unified and you said that a champion is usually unified. you even said taguchi is a champ since he has 2 belts, but thurman has 2 belts and you didnt call him a champion. where is the consistency? and how the f##k is lomachenko a champion? he won a vacant belt at 126 and beat Roman Martinez at 130 for the wbo. never unified. how is that not the definition of a title holder?

One world, one champion! What you're proposing has been tried for decades and it only made things worse. We only have four world champions because attempt to "ignore" the titles just made it easier to create more of them. The real solution is to be honest about the championships and to hold everyone accountable. There are four recognized world championships in boxing. The WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO. These are the organizations that recognize each other. These are the organizations the promoters, networks, fighters and managers recognize. Trying to add lineal champions, magazine champions or anything else just makes things even worse. We shouldn't be adding mythical titles, we should be deleting official titles. If four is too many, stop recognizing the WBO. Now we're back to three. It would be a huge improvement. If the WBA doesn't stop crowning multiple world champions in the same division, stop recognizing the WBA. Now we're back to two. It would be a huge improvement. The WBC and IBF are clearly the most credible titles in boxing. For different reasons. The WBC caters to the biggest stars, the IBF treats everyone the fairest regardless of whether you're a big star. If we could get down to two titles per division, it would improve things immensely. Even getting down to three titles would be a big help. But somebody has to be in charge. Someone has to mediate between the warring promoters. Someone has to rank the fighters. Someone has to order eliminators. Someone has to enforce title shots. The organizations exist for a reason. The problem is that there are too many of them, and there are too many of them because fans & media trying to "ignore" them made it soooooo easy to create more of them. Great assessment, and rundown. It just shows the low standards that has been set by promoters and the media who scatter the term "world champion" around like confetti. Last time I checked, there is only one world!

Just a thought. I don't really class someone like Adrien Broner who's held a few paper titles as a World champion. He's never been clearly the best in any division? They make it sound like these boxers are world beaters when in reality they're scared to fight eachother. There's over 50 "champions" in the sport at any one time, spread between 16 divisions. Just madness. It is debatable whether Tyson Fury and Adonis Stevenson are still the Heavyweight and Light Heavyweight champions, due to inactivity. It's also debatable whether Guillermo Rigondeaux is still the champion at Super Bantamweight, or will he have moved up for good? I'd be happy calling the winner of Oleksandr Usyk and Murat Gassiev the champion at Cruiserweight. Broner was clearly the best at 135 after the demarco fight

Sadly i cant envision less belts with all the money these associations create. I can see more being added which makes the chance to become the undisputed world champion nearly impossible. It's not just the sanctioning fees. This is the way the promoters (and Haymon) want it. It raises the cost of entry. It's like when all of the radio stations were blatantly being bribed with cash and drugs to play songs. The major record labels loved it. It kept their power safe. They could afford the bribes and nobody else could. The corrupt system made it so that smaller labels couldn't afford to compete. The height of sanctioning body bribery was the same way. King and Arum loved it because it meant nobody else could afford to compete with them. The biggest promoters (and Haymon) don't want more titles. They think four is enough. It would be too expensive to control them all if there were five or six and the value of all of them would decrease. It's usually a fringe promoter trying to prop up a small organization, or Bob Arum when he gets boxed out of the big orgs. Until Arum loses control of the WBO, I don't think we're at risk of adding more titles. Arum was the only one who had the clout to put the IBF on the map. Arum was the only one who had the clout to put the WBO on the map. As long as Arum has a monopoly of one org, he's happy. But if he gets pushed out of the WBO, we'll have a 5th title overnight because he'll jump in bed with the IBA or IBO and use ESPN to legitimize it overnight.

What you're proposing has been tried for decades and it only made things worse. We only have four world champions because attempt to "ignore" the titles just made it easier to create more of them. The real solution is to be honest about the championships and to hold everyone accountable. There are four recognized world championships in boxing. The WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO. These are the organizations that recognize each other. These are the organizations the promoters, networks, fighters and managers recognize. Trying to add lineal champions, magazine champions or anything else just makes things even worse. We shouldn't be adding mythical titles, we should be deleting official titles. If four is too many, stop recognizing the WBO. Now we're back to three. It would be a huge improvement. If the WBA doesn't stop crowning multiple world champions in the same division, stop recognizing the WBA. Now we're back to two. It would be a huge improvement. The WBC and IBF are clearly the most credible titles in boxing. For different reasons. The WBC caters to the biggest stars, the IBF treats everyone the fairest regardless of whether you're a big star. If we could get down to two titles per division, it would improve things immensely. Even getting down to three titles would be a big help. But somebody has to be in charge. Someone has to mediate between the warring promoters. Someone has to rank the fighters. Someone has to order eliminators. Someone has to enforce title shots. The organizations exist for a reason. The problem is that there are too many of them, and there are too many of them because fans & media trying to "ignore" them made it soooooo easy to create more of them. Sadly i cant envision less belts with all the money these associations create. I can see more being added which makes the chance to become the undisputed world champion nearly impossible.

I don't really class someone like Adrien Broner who's held a few paper titles as a World champion. He's never been clearly the best in any division? What you're proposing has been tried for decades and it only made things worse. We only have four world champions because attempt to "ignore" the titles just made it easier to create more of them. The real solution is to be honest about the championships and to hold everyone accountable. There are four recognized world championships in boxing. The WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO. These are the organizations that recognize each other. These are the organizations the promoters, networks, fighters and managers recognize. Trying to add lineal champions, magazine champions or anything else just makes things even worse. We shouldn't be adding mythical titles, we should be deleting official titles. If four is too many, stop recognizing the WBO. Now we're back to three. It would be a huge improvement. If the WBA doesn't stop crowning multiple world champions in the same division, stop recognizing the WBA. Now we're back to two. It would be a huge improvement. The WBC and IBF are clearly the most credible titles in boxing. For different reasons. The WBC caters to the biggest stars, the IBF treats everyone the fairest regardless of whether you're a big star. If we could get down to two titles per division, it would improve things immensely. Even getting down to three titles would be a big help. But somebody has to be in charge. Someone has to mediate between the warring promoters. Someone has to rank the fighters. Someone has to order eliminators. Someone has to enforce title shots. The organizations exist for a reason. The problem is that there are too many of them, and there are too many of them because fans & media trying to "ignore" them made it soooooo easy to create more of them.

They are belt holders. When a figher owns all of them, then he becomes a champ. Too bad, it's becoming nearly impossible to achieve because there are too many sanctioning bodies that collude with Business to prevent the best fights possible being made. And lineal status no longer holds any merit since the best don't find the best anymore.

Yes 100%!!!! lineal dont even mean anything anymore... your not a champ in my book until u at least unify two titles. i dont understand why boxing as a whole can not understand that they have wayyyyy too many world champions!! a belt used to mean u were the best in the entire world.. now there are 4 best in the world in ea weight class. It makes absolutely 0 sense.. think of how exciting it is when we get a unification bout... now imagine how much more exciting it would be if there was only one world champion. every title fight in every weight class would be exciting. to me anyway

If you have one of the 4 belts you're a champ. Simple.

No. With all the promoter feuds and net work feuds there would be nobody to call champions. It's too hard to do even for an excellent champion like GGG who tried like hell to get all the belts and so far is still missing the WBO belt. There are 17 weight classes in boxing and for years only Crawford was able to be champion of all 4 belts in his weight class. Now that Crawford is leaving 140 we have zero totally unified champions in the sport of boxing. Maybe we will get a 4 belt champion at cruiserweight but how long will he be able to keep all 4 belts? we might get a 4 belt heavyweight champion.

No. With all the promoter feuds and net work feuds there would be nobody to call champions. It's too hard to do even for an excellent champion like GGG who tried like hell to get all the belts and so far is still missing the WBO belt. There are 17 weight classes in boxing and for years only Crawford was able to be champion of all 4 belts in his weight class. Now that Crawford is leaving 140 we have zero totally unified champions in the sport of boxing. Maybe we will get a 4 belt champion at cruiserweight but how long will he be able to keep all 4 belts?

Lineal doesn't mean **** these days.

I agree. I don't tend to care for the title "World Champion" much more just cause how watered down that title is with how many division they are. Crawford was a legit champ, Thurman and Spence are legit champs. A lot of people hold a belt who I don't consider legit champs.

Who are the real champions of today?? seriously outside of the tournament at cruiser, who is really fighting the best and proving themselves?