People say Tank is not a 3 division champ due to the WBA"regular" title

[Citizen Koba]

yet some of those same people claim GGG had over 20 title defenses..so which is it??? is the belt a legit title or not?

It's an entirely ****** situation which can be resolved several ways, but I tend to say there can only be 1 champ per a sanctioning org at any given time, but that if there ain't an incumbent 'Super' Champ at any given time then the 'World' champ is the WBAs legitimate champion for for that period.

[Mammoth]

yet some of those same people claim GGG had over 20 title defenses..so which is it??? is the belt a legit title or not?

It's both. Tank isn't an actual 3 division champ and Golovkin doesn't have 20 title defenses. But yes, people can't chose when to recognize the WBA Regular when it fits. It's either an actual title or it isn't and really it isn't. It's just a secondary title.

[asgarth]

But you have consistency with people who think GGG doesnt have 20 defenses and tank isnt a 3 division champ.
is GGG having 20 defenses a majority opinion? If yes, that's bull****.

[Citizen Koba]

Everything involving belts is pretty much BS because there are so many of them. People have to evaluate things as they see them, and simply winning a belt is not an indication of prowess or success.

I think there is a somewhat important distinction between the Tank case and GGG - GGG was pretty much the man at MW when he picked up that regular belt - you could at least make a good case that he was the number 1 MW in the world starting at that time, and going through his defense record.

Tank did a Canelo-Fielding move - moving up in weight to target a regular belt vs a weak (for that weight class) belt holder.

What everyone has to do is evaluate what wins a guy has, and not what belts etc they win. It's all about who you fought, what level they were at that time, and what you did vs them.

Barrios, all things considered, is a solid or very solid win for Tank. But acting like Tank is a legit belt holder at 140 right now is a stretch. I don't think it was a stretch to say GGG was a legit belt holder at 160 when he picked up his first belt.

Nah GGG picked up the regular in 2010 or so when he was a nobody in international terms... problem being he should have fought Sturm to become the WBAs 'World' champion but Sturm didn't want the fight (for whatever reason) and the WBA obligingly - and reportedly for cash - changed their rules to accomodate him. Now generally when an incumbent refuses to defend they would lose their title, so Golovkin should have arguably become 'the' WBA Champ in 2010, but in a dicey bait 'n' switch what actually happened was that the WBA instead elevated Sturm to Super under their New '5 defense' rule and gave GGG the now effectively meaningless 'World' title.

In fact given this particularly slippery piece of chicanery from the WBA you could make a strong case that it's actually the 'World' title that was the legitimate one since the incumbent failed to defend it, but it gets tricky cos Sturm was a well known and long reigning champ whilst Golovkin was largely unknown outside the hardcore at that time and beat no one worth a damn to get the title, so good luck getting folk to buy the argument that Golovkin was the 'real' Champ however legitimate it may be.

Compromise I've settled on in my own head is allowing that there can be only one champion per division per sanctioning body at any given time, so if there's no WBA Super the World title carries on the primary lineage. If you do it that way you got GGG having 15 defenses I think, from the time Geale drops the Super to make the Mundine fight instead of facing Golovkin. But like I say if you want to make the case that Sturm's 'Super' title was never legitimate in the first place there is an argument for that it's just you run into consistency problems because folk will start arguing the case for half the other times the WBA has awarded bull**** belts as well.

I figured more people would accept a simple consistent rule rather than folk coming up with arguments for why their particular guy deserved it or didnt each time the WBA made another ridiculous title decision.

[Pac=Duran]

Listen man Tank fought nobody. He needs to fight a proper name, someone that he isnt a 8-1 favourite over.

Until then he's a hype job in my eyes. The real guys in and around his weight class are Lima Taylor and Teofimo because they took risk and fought hard fights

[Citizen Koba]

It's both. Tank isn't an actual 3 division champ and Golovkin doesn't have 20 title defenses. But yes, people can't chose when to recognize the WBA Regular when it fits. It's either an actual title or it isn't and really it isn't. It's just a secondary title.

If only it was that straightforward.

Problem you got there in simply derecognising the WBA 'World' is that the Super has been around since 2000 or so in various iterations and there have been numerous highly regarded Champions including some solid names, Hopkins (at 175), Hatton, Kessler, Maidana, Zab and Collazo to name just a few who held the 'World' title rather than the 'super' as the sole incumbent WBA Champion and you'd be effectively saying they weren't real champions even though they were at the time universally recognised as the WBA champ.... which would also deligitimise the guys who won their 'titles' from em and so on.

So you gotta kinda figure out a ruling that squares with the record books going back 20 odd years.

Fkn WBA screwed everyone with that piece of Bullsheet. Thing is it wasn't necessary at all for the purpose they claimed (reducing the mandatory burden on unified Champs)... they could have just kept one title and simply used 'super' as a designator for a unified champion if they really felt it was necessary. Problems started when they split it down into two seperate titles (well actually 3 or 4 since they variously described the same title as 'super' 'Unified' or 'Undisputed') and were then multiplied when they instigated the '5 defenses' rule in 2010, abandoning all pretense that they were doing it for the reason they had claimed in the first place..

[Smash]

its like, my house is better than your house, my car is better than your car, my belt is better than your belt

[buddyr]

that "belt" tank won this past weekend is bs. Just as his belt at 135. If they keep allowing this, he can go all the way up to 175 getting titles from hand picked opponents. You know he WBA loves those sanctioning fees so they can put the belt on anyone they want just to get him another title because it's more money for them.

[_Rexy_]

The reason G's is somewhat different is because the WBA is supposed to upgrade you to Super after 5 defenses.

If Tank wants to defend his regular belt 5 times, then I'll call him a champ.

[Smash]

well if a regular belt is lets say only worth half a super belt & if you have won 2 regular belts, with my superior maths i can say, he has 1 super belt from his 2 regs