Do you think this wood improve the sport

[col Blake]

To avoid match fixing or and picking of opponents fighters must be forced to make mandatory defences against fighters in the top 4 rankings, even if they are hard to sell if the promoters struggle to sell the fight the fighters and promoters should have smaller purses and lower takings at smaller venues and if a champ wants to make a voluntary defence he should have to take a smaller purse than his opponent thus making these fights less attractive to the champ and making them less likely to happen
Would this stop those champs from conning the public improve the sport and drag it back up to where it used to be the top sport on the planet.

[squealpiggy]

Unfortunately this very concept has been willfully abused by sanctioning bodies who accepted payments in return for rankings by promoters. The IBF was indicted for doing so and if you take a look at the top ten of any organisation and any weight class you'll see more than one "WTF?" fighter in their top ten.

A better system would be a seeding system similar to the one used in tennis, but to implement this we would need to ditch the silly notion that one loss means that a fighter is "shot".

[col Blake]

or give each champ a min number of voluntary defences they can have

[squealpiggy]

For this to work there would need to be one legit champion of the world that was not beholden to financial influence from the likes of Don King et al. Unfortunately the boxing bodies are no longer bound by the traditions in which they were created (unlike, for example, Wimbledon, which would not accept bribes for seeding in case it destroyed their prestige) so I can't see them having any problems accepting payments from interested parties.

[Steelhammer86]

The WBA allows three voluntary defenses before a mandatory, which is terrible. The IBF requires that every second title fight must be a mandatory, that's a better system. All the sanctioning bodies need improvement, but lately the IBF is at least trying to improve.

The idea of a four boxer tournament like the IBF is having to determine a heavyweight division mandatory is a great idea.

[OptimusWolf]

What is needed is a centralised matchmaking system, based around one set of ranking and one champion in each weight class. Of course this won't happen, as it means no place for the existing sanctioning bodies. Ironic really, given that the organisers of UFC will be raking in more money that the boxing sanctioning bodies combined soon....

I hate people getting title shots without beating a single top 20 opponent in the fans eyes. If you're good enough, then you should be able to take the risk of beating the good to get a shot at the best.

[Steelhammer86]

I hate people getting title shots without beating a single top 20 opponent in the fans eyes. If you're good enough, then you should be able to take the risk of beating the good to get a shot at the best.

I agree, for example Okhello, Briggs and Beck got their title shots without beating a contender. Part of the problem is, the top 20 contenders sometimes choose journeymen as opponents (Calvin Brock's last fight) and Don King's contenders don't fight often enough (Lyakhovich). There should be more fights between contenders to determine who's worthy of a title shot.

[McNulty]

What kind of wood are you talking about?

[kayjay]

The voluntaries is where the good fights take place, so I don't understand this.

[satori555]

put everyones name in a hat and there you go problem solved.