Only one Champion.

[fight_professor]

There can be only one legitimate 'best fighter' in each division at any one time. Ergo, he is the champion. He alone should be crowned as such by a singular, universal governing body.

[Humean]

There can be only one legitimate 'best fighter' in each division at any one time. Ergo, he is the champion. He alone should be crowned as such by a singular, universal governing body.

Can you not see how hard, if not impossible, that is to achieve?

Do you and others really believe that the champions during the largely 'one champion era' were always the best in each division?

The glorious 1940s at welterweight and light-heavyweight conjured up:

Freddie Cochrane & Marty Servo and Gus Lesnevich & Freddie Mills.

[Ray Corso]

Back in the day I didn't care for the system in place. I thought the organizations that ruled in the sport weren't very good for the sport. However compared to todays organizational cluster plunks yesteryear seems ideal.
Having two organizations (WBA & WBC) gave all the promoters an option with most of the North America working with the WBA + most Euro connection federations. Then the WBC mostly handling the South America + Mexico geographic regions
and some Euro connections.
We had the IBF as a lesser entre level internationally and the USBA as the entre USA organization. Sort of a "junior title" that could move a fighter into a top ten or even top five spot. Depending on the fighters connections.
Then with two world champions it was up to the federations to meet and agree on match ups (money laid down hahaha) . When they agreed that's were rematch clauses got their beginnings. If a federation lost their title they at least had a shot to regain it.
It wasn't easy for them to agree to put their belts up but they did when the fan base insisted. If the winner of both belts refuses to meet the number one contender within 12 months the belt holder was stripped and the federation ran its box offs to appoint the new titlists so it all washed out well.
Its all about the money, the fans and some fighters believe its a sport but the people who actually make the calls know its a business. Ray.

[Panthershock]

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.

as a rather avid golf fan, I see the point you are making, but the sport is not thought of in that manner, at least by me.

In boxing you win a championship against 1 opponent and actively hold on to the title. In order to lose it, you have to be defeated or relinquish it. It is about being superior to one person competing against you. The championship is about 1 particular person and the structure organizes around others trying to beat person

Golf is a battle of over 100 players to shoot the best score on a particular week, nearly all entered can win. You have no ability to affect what someone else does. Being a major champion or ranked number 1 does not make you different from anyone else competing on a given week. Every tournament is a battle for a vacant crown. Tiger Woods in 2000, his absolute prime won 9 of 20 tournaments. He lost the majority of the time he competed.

as for the world ranking

Adam Scott on sunday night will take over the top spot from Tiger Woods, its mathematically certain. He has not won a tournament this year, Tiger is injured and out indefinitely yet held his spot for 2 months. There is also the FedEx Cup standings, Jimmy Walker currently has the top spot. Bubba Watson won the Masters.

In boxing, we wonder if Golovkin could beat Andre Ward for example, or if Mayweather and Pacquiao fought in 6 months who would win? There are clear individuals and titles bestowed.

No one thinks in terms like Could Bubba Watson beat Adam Scott. It is a sport of parody, hence a new championship every week. Then you can argue about the better year or career of players. But no one thinks of a players as the reigning world champion of golf

Boxing is supposed to be about directly answering these questions. One person establishes themselves at the top and you have to beat them to get there. More titles allows this to be subverted, and we wind up arguing hypothetical s about fights that should have happened. Mayweather and Pacquiao would not have had the luxury of padding resumes by winning ABC titles and claiming to be a champion in X divisions, they would be forced to face off.

[- Ram Raid -]

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.

Boxing of course is all about masculinity and no other sport has mirrored the mores of the world quite like this one. Perhaps the desire to return to the days of one champion per weight class can be seen as an example of the wider personal and collective uncertainties that have abounded around the issue of identity in late modern societies. In particular the profound anxiety that has accompanied the supposed crisis of masculinity.

The new social relationships of late capitalism have given rise to the desire to return to a familiar and restricted world where a man's place was less insecure, to a time when everybody knew who the Champion of the World was. If even masculinities pre eminent arena is fractured and ambiguous then where are those anchor points that a man uses to shore up his sense of identity and belonging? The answer of course is that they have been set adrift. And I believe that you are right, in that there is no going back. The world is bewilderingly complicated and uncertain, boxing is a part of that world and it reflects it. We are all going to have to get used to that. Masculinities lineage has been shattered and we've been left with the fragmented pieces.

[Humean]

as a rather avid golf fan, I see the point you are making, but the sport is not thought of in that manner, at least by me.

In boxing you win a championship against 1 opponent and actively hold on to the title. In order to lose it, you have to be defeated or relinquish it. It is about being superior to one person competing against you. The championship is about 1 particular person and the structure organizes around others trying to beat person

Golf is a battle of over 100 players to shoot the best score on a particular week, nearly all entered can win. You have no ability to affect what someone else does. Being a major champion or ranked number 1 does not make you different from anyone else competing on a given week. Every tournament is a battle for a vacant crown. Tiger Woods in 2000, his absolute prime won 9 of 20 tournaments. He lost the majority of the time he competed.

as for the world ranking

Adam Scott on sunday night will take over the top spot from Tiger Woods, its mathematically certain. He has not won a tournament this year, Tiger is injured and out indefinitely yet held his spot for 2 months. There is also the FedEx Cup standings, Jimmy Walker currently has the top spot. Bubba Watson won the Masters.

In boxing, we wonder if Golovkin could beat Andre Ward for example, or if Mayweather and Pacquiao fought in 6 months who would win? There are clear individuals and titles bestowed.

No one thinks in terms like Could Bubba Watson beat Adam Scott. It is a sport of parody, hence a new championship every week. Then you can argue about the better year or career of players. But no one thinks of a players as the reigning world champion of golf

Boxing is supposed to be about directly answering these questions. One person establishes themselves at the top and you have to beat them to get there. More titles allows this to be subverted, and we wind up arguing hypothetical s about fights that should have happened. Mayweather and Pacquiao would not have had the luxury of padding resumes by winning ABC titles and claiming to be a champion in X divisions, they would be forced to face off.

I don't necessarily disagree with much of this. In regards to the last paragraph, this is precisely relates to the point i'm making, that I don't think it is actually possible to fulfill this diehard's dream. If fighters fought every week or perhaps even every month then it might be theoretically possible to determine the champion in the substantial way that diehards want, but they do not. If it is not possible for all the top fighters at each weight class to be able to fight each other, at least before many get well past their best, then surely multiple champions is a desirable alternative?

You offer the counterfactual of Mayweather and Pacquaio being forced to face off in a different system to this but isn't there another possible counterfactual that says that someone like Pacquiao may have never received the opportunities to rise to the top without multiple belts?

Boxing of course is all about masculinity and no other sport has mirrored the mores of the world quite like this one. Perhaps the desire to return to the days of one champion per weight class can be seen as an example of the wider personal and collective uncertainties that have abounded around the issue of identity in late modern societies. In particular the profound anxiety that has accompanied the supposed crisis of masculinity.

The new social relationships of late capitalism have given rise to the desire to return to a familiar and restricted world where a man's place was less insecure, to a time when everybody knew who the Champion of the World was. If even masculinities pre eminent arena is fractured and ambiguous then where are those anchor points that a man uses to shore up his sense of identity and belonging? The answer of course is that they have been set adrift. And I believe that you are right, in that there is no going back. The world is bewilderingly complicated and uncertain, boxing is a part of that world and it reflects it. We are all going to have to get used to that. Masculinities lineage has been shattered and we've been left with the fragmented pieces.

Well those supposed certainties were largely an illusion, the one true champion who fought his way to the top was as much a chimera then as it is now. How could it possibly be the case when the sport revolved around the machinations formed in a dingy hotel in Manhattan by a bunch of crooks?

[- Ram Raid -]

Well those supposed certainties were largely an illusion, the one true champion who fought his way to the top was as much a chimera then as it is now. How could it possibly be the case when the sport revolved around the machinations formed in a dingy hotel in Manhattan by a bunch of crooks?

I wholeheartedly agree. I'd add that there was a symbolism there that people bought into, some element of excessive and irrational devotion that allowed them to disavow what they really knew was going on all along and act as if they didn't know at all.

Anything that punctured that fetish could be more easily passed off (wrongly) as an aberration. Maybe the structural simplicity, and the sense of assurance that that engenders, made it more feasible to do so.

With competing and contradictory narratives there's already an element of disbelief to start with before we even begin to disavow what we really know in favour of that which buffers against the sordid reality of it all.

There was a time when journalists didn't dig too deep, when exposes didn't expose too much, when news wasn't rolling and when social media didn't spread information like the instantaneous wildfire that's at our fingertips 24/7.

It has become increasingly difficult to hold up sporting symbols as the ideal embodiment of manhood and heroism. They may not have been real in the first place, but there was a time when it was a lot easier to believe.

[Panthershock]

I don't necessarily disagree with much of this. In regards to the last paragraph, this is precisely relates to the point i'm making, that I don't think it is actually possible to fulfill this diehard's dream. If fighters fought every week or perhaps even every month then it might be theoretically possible to determine the champion in the substantial way that diehards want, but they do not. If it is not possible for all the top fighters at each weight class to be able to fight each other, at least before many get well past their best, then surely multiple champions is a desirable alternative?

You offer the counterfactual of Mayweather and Pacquaio being forced to face off in a different system to this but isn't there another possible counterfactual that says that someone like Pacquiao may have never received the opportunities to rise to the top without multiple belts?



Well those supposed certainties were largely an illusion, the one true champion who fought his way to the top was as much a chimera then as it is now. How could it possibly be the case when the sport revolved around the machinations formed in a dingy hotel in Manhattan by a bunch of crooks?

I have no delusions of a "perfect" system, perfection is an illusion that can never truly be achieved.

The issue I have with multiple champions at each division is that it allows for fighters to more easily capture "world titles" in multiple divisions and to rack up successful "world title" defenses. These accomplishments go a long way in determining a boxer's legacy.

It's not perfect, but I think 1 title per division creates an environment more conducive to great fighters meeting each other