Only one Champion.

[Weltschmerz]

There can be only one...

[LacedUp]

The very notion of having a multitude of 'champions' defies the very meaning of 'champion - "a person who has surpassed all rivals in sport or other competition".

You cannot have multiple people surpassing all other rivals in the same division.

One belt, one division. I don't care if they make a combined wbc/a/o/ibf/ring magazine belt and combine the colours. It could be white with pink dots and and yellow squares for all I care.

It's getting increasingly annyoing. Add to the four already annoying orgs, the ibos, ibu, wbu,wbf, regular belts, interim belts, international belts.

They should create a fighters union and with it, a belt for each division. They should fight for that and forget about the history of the other orgs - as clearly they themselves have.

[Weltschmerz]

The very notion of having a multitude of 'champions' defies the very meaning of 'champion - "a person who has surpassed all rivals in sport or other competition".

You cannot have multiple people surpassing all other rivals in the same division.

One belt, one division. I don't care if they make a combined wbc/a/o/ibf/ring magazine belt and combine the colours. It could be white with pink dots and and yellow squares for all I care.

It's getting increasingly annyoing. Add to the four already annoying orgs, the ibos, ibu, wbu,wbf, regular belts, interim belts, international belts.

They should create a fighters union and with it, a belt for each division. They should fight for that and forget about the history of the other orgs - as clearly they themselves have.

Money talks.

[Daddy T]

Yes.......

lol what 4 posts in and this bs thread should have been over ... and yet it goes on...

[ShoulderRoll]

I hope this is a joke. Broner was the beneficiary of a very well padded road to his titles.

Broner fought against international competition. Armstrong didn't, he just stayed home fighting Americans.



(Yes I'm being sarcastic.)

[SBleeder]

Honestly... what kid hasn't dreamed of becoming the vacant IBF Super Middleweight Interim Diamond Champion by winning at a catch-weight of 164 pounds?

[- Ram Raid -]

The number one ranked player in golf and tennis is not usually called the world champion, the Wimbledon winner is called the Wimbledon champion, the US Masters the Masters champion etc. You could think of the WBC as like Wimbledon etc. Just as winning Wimbledon doesn't necessarily mean you are the best tennis player, winning the WBC lightweight title doesn't necessarily mean you are the best lightweight. The WBC lightweight world champion is a lightweight world champion not necessarily the world lightweight champion. The point of this thread was to show that there is nothing strange or unusual about this and therefore too many diehard boxing fans are barking up the wrong tree.

I'm not convinced that your comparing of tennis to boxing stands up to scrutiny. Tennis may not have a 'world champion' but it does have a universally recognised 'number one' based on a structured point system over a 52 week period, that takes into account how the player has performed at various tournaments. The difference in wording between world champion/world number one is relevant because you can't become the tennis world number one just by defeating the person who holds that position, unlike with boxing's world champions.

The analogy of WBC and Wimbledon doesn't hold weight precisely because no one within tennis is claiming that the Wimbledon champion is automatically recognised as the best player in the world. The Grand Slam tournaments such as The US Open, Roland Garros, etc aren't making any claims to legitimacy as to the standing of their respective champions as being recognised as the world number one. They've merely won an individual tournament that adds to their overall ranking within a points based system.

Conversely, the WBC are making those claims to legitimacy and are stating that the holder of their title is the best within the division. The WBA, IBF, WBO and seemingly infinite rollcall of alphabetti-spaghetti organisations are also making exactly the same claim that their organisation and recognised champion are the legitimate title and title holder. There clearly is something unusual about that. I can think of no other sport that is as fractured and unstructured at its highest level as is boxing. So, the fans aren't barking up the wrong tree because the other sports that you have used as a comparison aren't making multiple, competing, and contradictory claims as to who is the legitimate number one. Boxing on the other hand, has been doing just that for quite some time.

[- Ram Raid -]

Honestly... what kid hasn't dreamed of becoming the vacant IBF Super Middleweight Interim Diamond Champion by winning at a catch-weight of 164 pounds?

Apparently I can't give you green K. I must have been riding your jock-strap in recent months.

[Humean]

Are you sure about that? Boxing was very provincial during Armstrong's day.

Broner has had to win his titles against an international field of pugilists.

Winning three championships at three different weight classes concurrently when there was only one title at each of those weights is more impressive than winning four in the four titles per weight era. It is not greater simply because of quality of opposition. I'm not actually impressed by most of Armstrong's opposition.

Broner fought against international competition. Armstrong didn't, he just stayed home fighting Americans.


(Yes I'm being sarcastic.)

Actually Armstrong made defences in London and Cuba.

Those championships in Tennis only affect each ranking, but there is still a definitive ranking and it's one board or ranking system, under one 'commission'.

You always know who the number one player is in Tennis and there is no debate about it. There aren't four or more divisions of tennis player rankings, each one declaring their guy the number one man in the world.


It's completely different.

It is not completely different at all. You always know who is ranked number one but people always debate about who is the best, between Federer or Nadal or between Nadal and Djokovic regardless of who the rankings say is number one. Tennis has potentially four major champions plus all the minor champions who win the non-major events. If boxing introduced a ranking system based upon performances in the same fashion but still had the four sanctioning bodies and their respective titles it would be very similar to tennis, with one difference being that each of the sanctioning bodies champions would be claiming they are 'world' champion. That however is largely a boxing curiosity.

The very notion of having a multitude of 'champions' defies the very meaning of 'champion - "a person who has surpassed all rivals in sport or other competition".

You cannot have multiple people surpassing all other rivals in the same division.

Each sanctioning body is holding a 'competition' so it does not defy the definition of 'champion'. This is precisely why i'm comparing each bodies titles with the majors in tennis and golf.

[Humean]

I'm not convinced that your comparing of tennis to boxing stands up to scrutiny. Tennis may not have a 'world champion' but it does have a universally recognised 'number one' based on a structured point system over a 52 week period, that takes into account how the player has performed at various tournaments. The difference in wording between world champion/world number one is relevant because you can't become the tennis world number one just by defeating the person who holds that position, unlike with boxing's world champions.

The analogy of WBC and Wimbledon doesn't hold weight precisely because no one within tennis is claiming that the Wimbledon champion is automatically recognised as the best player in the world. The Grand Slam tournaments such as The US Open, Roland Garros, etc aren't making any claims to legitimacy as to the standing of their respective champions as being recognised as the world number one. They've merely won an individual tournament that adds to their overall ranking within a points based system.

Conversely, the WBC are making those claims to legitimacy and are stating that the holder of their title is the best within the division. The WBA, IBF, WBO and seemingly infinite rollcall of alphabetti-spaghetti organisations are also making exactly the same claim that their organisation and recognised champion are the legitimate title and title holder. There clearly is something unusual about that. I can think of no other sport that is as fractured and unstructured at its highest level as is boxing. So, the fans aren't barking up the wrong tree because the other sports that you have used as a comparison aren't making multiple, competing, and contradictory claims as to who is the legitimate number one. Boxing on the other hand, has been doing just that for quite some time.

There are of course many differences between boxing and tennis but tennis does produce many champions just like boxing but like you said the great peculiarity in boxing is the consistent claim to be 'world' champion. Now one obvious difference between say Wimbledon and French Open and between WBC and WBA is that the two tennis competitions are constituent parts of the greater tour ATP & WTA. If they were rivals like WBC and WBA then perhaps they would claim that their champion as the one true world champion.

Surely diehard boxing fans have something of a fetish for determining who is the one true champion? Tennis fans want to see who wins Wimbledon or the French open not to see who will be ranked number one. I can understand it because Nadal and Djokovic can and do compete directly against each other all the time whereas the top fighters at each weight often do not. We are too often deprived of seeing the best fight the best unlike in other sports but it is not the multiple sanctioning bodies per se that are stopping this.

Anyway the point is that pretty much all sports have multiple champions, boxing is therefore not strange for this reason, it is strange because each champions claims to be the 'world' champion and this has come about because of how fragmented the sport is. However for reasons that have already been suggested in other posts perhaps this might not be a bad thing, or at the very least that with the particular characteristics of boxing that moving to a 'one' champion system would not actually be very desirable.

I would like to see boxing better organized but i'm not sure if the way diehard fans want it to be organized could work in a desirable way.