Marciano ruined boxing...

[chidave]

I dont think Marciano is the reason...

I see the creation of all these championship belts as the real reason why top fighters are able to avoid eachother and maintain an unbeaten record.

If there was one championship belt for each weight, it would be impossible to avoid fighters in the same division with zero's in the lose column.

Boxers and promoters and the governing bodies should sort this mess out, if they did, and people could recognise the one champion at each weight, boxing would be GREAT again.

edit: looks like someone already made this point.....

I couldn't agree more with this post, if there was only one champion, it would be impossible to avoid the best and remain undefeated. Now...people can be "champions" for years without ever having fought the elite fighters in their division. This is boxing's biggest problem.

[squealpiggy]

I'm resurrecting this old topic of mine to put in the following article taken from Budd Schulberg's anthology "Ringside: A Treasury of Boxing Reportage".

Alas, I was searching for heroes in the mode of the great ones of old, from Barney Ross and Henry Armstrong to the lightweight version of Roberto Duran, unbeatable at 135. And believing I had found a twenty first century model in Sugar Shane. And then he comes apart against a latter day entry, Vernon Forrest, who in turn is taken out by the primitive Ricardo Mayorga, who is soon exposed as a mindless punching bag by Felix Trinidad, who then loses every round to defensive marvel with the wicked right jab, Winky Wright. Our trouble today is that the top performers don't have enough fights to establish a credible average. In the days when boxing was more of a mainline sport, the best fighters fought several times a month. They were gaining experience our best boys will never know. Good God, while winning the featherweight title in 1937, Henry Armstrong fought twenty-six times. And after winning the world lightweight title from Barney Ross (The greatest ***ish fighter since my old man's hero, the great Benny Leonard) our little buzzsaw from LA defended his crown twenty times, finally losing it to Fritzie Zivic when he was beginning to slow down at last after one hundred fights, in there with a score of immortals and so many other toughies whose names still ring a bell with long memoried old timers.

A grand master in chess doesn't win a world title on his first or second time out. He learns by playing other masters. Our chess game with blood is no different. If Sugar Shane had been fighting sixy or seventy years ago, he might have learned from a Vernon Forrest defeat how to cope with that type of fighter. Learning on the job even when losing was par for the course in those busy old days. But in today's fifty-to-a-million-dollar HBO or Showtime extravaganzas, to lose a mega-match, often that once-a-year PPV for all the marbles, is to find yourself in virtual eclipse, if not retirement. Great fighters, indeed Hall of Famers, often lost their share. Kid Gavilan. Billy Graham. Jake LaMotta. Emile Griffith... a distinguished list. Because the quality of the opposition was so high and fought so often. But today, with a lovely boxer like Shane Mosley (and three or four others come to mind), instead of three, it's one strike and you're out. Either you're a multi-million-dollar-baby or a bum. I look before and after and pine for the days when boxing was as frequently competitive as big time tennis.

[Jim_Davis]

The greatest always lose.