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Linear champ doesn't always mean being the best HW or doing the best work at the division anyway.
Jack Dempsey was the recognized HW champ from 1919-1926, but Harry Wills was doing the better work and beating more contenders. Obviously Dempsey wasn't doing the best work at HW from 1923-1926, seeing as he never fought.
Sammy Serrano was the linear 130 lb. champ when Alexis Arguello had one of the belts there. Arguello was the better fighter and beat the better fighters.
Michael Spinks from 1985-88 (as opposed to Mike Tyson who cleaned out the division) and Floyd Patterson late in his reign (as opposed to Sonny Liston who was cleaning out the division) are a couple of other examples.Comment
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I always did wonder why Wills was never brought up more. based on his record, he looked better than both Dempsey and Johnson, but never seems to get mentioned.
thats true. but Thread Stealer gave the reasons why Jones was the linear champ, and I think its fair to say that if he moved up in weight, he vacated his title. or at least semi-fair, haha.Nobody gets stripped at the linear title for that reason; they just get frowned at. Like Shannon Briggs. Nobody ever thought that he would be the HW champion but it happened.Comment
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One problem though, Jones never defeated the man that once held two of his major titles (IBF and WBA) and had never lost those titles in the ring.
That would be the aforementioned Michalczewski, who remains unbeaten in 47 professional bouts. But that's business as usual for the sanctioning bodies and Michalczewski and his promotional company seem more than happy to racking up relatively easy defenses of his WBO crown. But why isn't he wearing one of those sparking 'Ring Magazine' Championship belts? After all, he holds much more of a claim to the linear title(you know, the man who beat the man, and so on and so on) and he never lost those titles where it counts -- in the ring. Wasn't the 'Ring Championship' designed to protect fighters from these types of things? Why is Jones 'the Ring Champion'?
"Because he put together the three alphabet belts," explained Nigel Collins, the editor of The Ring magazine who was instrumental in instituting their championship policy. "When he unified the alphabet belts, we figured that was enough."
But didn't Michalczewski do that when he downed Hill?
"One of our problems was that when we were putting together our policy," continued Collins, "you could go back and you could find a bunch of weird stuff going on with a lot of the guys. And we just didn't want to get into doing anything retroactive. It would drive you absolutely nuts. Rocky Marciano would still be champ or something. It was too much, so we figured, ' Let's take it from this point forward' and at that time he already had the three belts, we said, 'OK, we'll make him the champ'."
If their policy was in place in 1997, Michalczewski "probably would have been The Ring Champion" says Collins. But he notes that he would have to check on the rankings of the fighters he defeated at that point to make a definitive statement. But if he was their champion, unlike the WBA and IBF, he would have never been stripped of his title.
"That's one of the beauties of our system," Collins, points out. "You don't have to worry about all that bulls__t. I mean, there are champions that abuse their position, that's a fact of life, but when you look at all the Byzantine situations that are created, when you begin stripping guys and order them to fight this guy and the other, it creates a situation that is far worse than having an occasional guy who ducks worthy contenders."
But it is ironic that Jones was awarded his title by 'The Ring', largely on the fact that Michalczewski was stripped of his titles.
"Every now and then we get a call or letter from somebody that says Dariusz Michalczewski should be the champion," says Collins. "First of all, it's retroactive and we're not gong to do that. But secondly, what I like about our policy is that it eliminates the necessity for the kind of story you're writing. It make it real simple, 'did you beat the champ?' If you didn't, you're not the champ. If there was no champ, 'did you meet the criteria that we've established?'"Comment
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Some pretty good posts in this thread covers the issue. But I'll add that linearity stopped when Archie Moore vacated his title in 1952. Next problematic ending was when Bob Foster retired in 1974. After Foster a bunch of good fighters claimed portions of the title but noone seemed to gain the upper hand until Spinks came along.
Then he moved to HW and the controversy starts again with several governing bodies and failure to get an undisputed champion. If you are of the opinion that Virgil Hill was the champion (no direct linearity possible for anyone), then you must have Zsolt Erdei as champion today.Comment
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In the ring magazine that i got a few months ago, they stated that Erdie was the linear champion so you can't get much more proof than that. They were also talking about how he is not interested in fighting the big key names and only wants to keep his title by defending against lesser opponents. They were doing a piece on which fighters were making the right career moves and who were making the wrongs ones and he was under wrong, along with Kessler, Wright and a few others.Comment
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