Scam of Boxing

[Marchegiano]

Removed what he actually said for space but what I have to say is in addition to Koba's original so read that first

Good lord this has got to be my most interrupted post ever. Every time I get a line or two something comes up that needs my immediate attention. Such a pain, I wanted to ***** about it.

The only important element left out, I reckon, is the fact that we speak about ye olden weight division in dates like they existed in those dates. This isn't your failure, it is the failure of historians and history fans who present boxing history in a misleading way. So while I'm going to tear into the info's ass just a little I want it clear you, Koba, did a very good job with this and the only way one would know what I have to say is if they'd taken a deep dive. A quick dip will only give you this sort of misleading narrative.

So to begin let's get into these dates:

1738
1840s - love how specific the first date is and by the second it's "Oh, ya know, abouts the 1840s bud." I do that too, for casual convo....not a ****ing resource
1860
1889
1909
1920
1979


Alright, so to make those explanations with those dates absolute bull**** what do we need? We need more divisions than just LW and HW prior to the "1840s" don't we? Take a look at multi-weight champion of England Daniel Mendoza who owned the LW, WW, MW, and HW titles from 1783-1790 while weighing under 160 for every one of those titles.

Danny The ***'s record: Cyber Boxing Zone -- Daniel Mendoza

How is a Middleweight or Welterweight title even part of his resume if Heavy and Light are the only divisions and being above and below 160 is the decider until the mid 19th century? 50 year prior to 1840.

How does a LW fight a HW anyway?

Three very important factors in weight division history is why:

1.) Weight division, regardless of which set of rules you take a quick peek at, was an informal affair until the New York State Athletic Commission along with the National Boxing Association made them formal. So anyone could claim a division

2.) Heavyweight had no minimum. It was a max weight system exclusively. So any man could challenge the HWs but the HWs can not challenge any man.

3.) Weight divisions are the original unterbelts. In the 1840s it's not the advent of new divisions that's popular. It's the rise in popularity of divisions that have had claims since the 1780s at least.

Originally you have the champion and he's doing his thing taking in all the cash for his exhibits and making big bucks with high profile fights and training nobility. You can not beat this man but you think you are the best man outside of the champ. How do you make something like what he has without having to fight him? You make up modifiers to his title. Now you're the best man below his weight and people pay more attention to you. Let's pretend you just invented LW. Let's say you're 160.

This other ******* hears about what you're doing and feels about the same about it. So he makes a new title for himself, calls himself the middleweight champion and says any man smaller than 160 may try for his title. Who is the 160 champion then? What is LW or MW?

That's why in and around the 1840s rather than seeing clear definitive champions and divisions what you actually have is a hodgepodge of contrary claims.

It gets ever better!

Let's say you defeat the other 160 champion who claims 160 is MW. Now let's say you lose to a guy who maxes at 145 and claims 145 is in fact welterweight. 160 just went from a disputed division between LW and MW then became definitively WW and 145.

That's a far cry from formal weight divisions and ripe through boxing history until the NSC came about.

That's why you have so many cuts in the smaller divisions. There are more fighters so more guys making claims and honestly historians have been extremely lazy sus-ing it all out.

What actually made a division was a claim, for most of history, and that claim would often be contrary to others at that time, but what made a division a stayer was who made those claims and how popular they were when made. If you're taking the belt off a very famous champion who made a division very famous you're more apt to change the weight that division reflects than the name of the division. Then the NSC takes the ability for champions to make weight=division claims and makes their own but we're not done yet.

so 1738-1920, write those year off as informal at best unless you want start tracking down all the champions to give a more honest depiction of the wax and wanes of divisions over time. Which, if that wasn't an endless headache I would have already released a list of champions that describes the changes in division in more detail. It isn't that the info printed in Ring or whatever is lies so much as half the truth.

When the NSC was formalizing weight divisions England and Europe was losing the focus of the sport and America was the new focus. John L Sullivan is big ****s everywhere, he is boxing at that time. So while yes, they had formalized and done well in England it isn't fair to say everyone around the world just adopted LPRR or NSC divisional guidelines. America was still working off a claims system all the way until the NBA stepped in and took control worldwide.

Given that scale of chronology I think it's clear thinks like CW are not as new as people seem to believe. It wasn't so much we had the set 8 forever then we threw in some here and there as much as we struggled to define division until the 20s and even then so much of it was ingrained in the industry you couldn't rightly go by fair as much as popular.

Which is still true. In terms of fair BW is useless. In terms of popular, doesn't have fan support but doesn't need it, it's about population and the population can now support the division, so, still a populace act. It exists because of popularity.

[4truth]

Much as I hate to agree with the WBC about anything, and I do question their motives, the 190 cruiser weight division and addition of Bridgerweight, does make sense.

[WBC WBA IBF]

What is the worth of an '8 division' champ if the weight discrepancy is so low in the lower weights ?

There's never been an eight division champion. You can choose to count the lineal title or you can choose to count the WBC/WBA/IBF/WBO titles, but you can't mix and match two conflicting philosophies to try to scam your way to an eight division champion.

[REDEEMER]

Agree 100%. I think classes need to adjust to the size change in humans over the last 100 years.

Wrestling kind of did this so boxing should look into it.

Holy cow this post makes sense . What’s going on ,you feeling alright today ?

[YoungManRumble]

It's almost as if when you're considerably smaller it's harder to cut a % of your body weight!

Another 10/10 Haka thread.

[elfag]

lol at 4 divisions in a 10 pound range at the bottom end. thats 16+ belts for 10 pounds. its ***ing ******, fix it already. nobody even knows who those small guys are because its so fractured.

[elfag]

There's never been an eight division champion. You can choose to count the lineal title or you can choose to count the WBC/WBA/IBF/WBO titles, but you can't mix and match two conflicting philosophies to try to scam your way to an eight division champion.

lol at this know it all that claimed he was betting a million on fwilder over fury. lmao fraud

[WBC WBA IBF]

lol at this know it all that claimed he was betting a million on fwilder over fury. lmao fraud

I don't think words mean what you think they mean.

Worse, I don't think you realize how obvious it is to others when you try to change the subject every time you're wrong.

Are you here to discuss the topic in the thread or are you here to **** up another thread with your whining? We get it. You're broke and you get triggered when other people aren't broke. That's your problem, not mine.

[Marchegiano]

I read my first post with the intention of patching it up because I knew having started and stopped so many times it was probably ****, and it was. So much so I'm just gonna let it float there and work on a new one.

Shooting from the hip:

The entire reason I have never charted weight divisions from any period to any period but have charted championed from preclassical antiquity to the present day is because the former is much, much, much more difficult to map than the latter. Lineal, pretenders, claimants, etc, all easier and simplified by the simplistic nature of the heavyweight division.

When dealing in weight divisions I personally divide boxing into two distinct eras. Formal and Informal weight divisions. Most of boxing history would fall under informal divisions. What we live in presently is the formal era. The formal era is boring in a sense because there's nothing to really look up. Google divisions, yup, those are they, everyone goes by it, done. In the period when informal divisions became formalized you have a depiction of formal divisions side-by-side with their informal counterparts. Those are interesting. The period prior, just the informal, is a cluster****.

While in 1909, or, Jack Johnson's era, it's fair to say Europe had formalized their divisions, but in America, they regarded European formalities as more suggestions than rules.

It isn't until the government in America, or New York, took control over boxing in America than America started to use standardize weight divisions. I'm pretty sure legal boxing in weight divisions is done in 1920, but champions and titles are still informal until 21.

So because there's about a decade between them and because there's a tiny bit of time between formal divisions and formal titles, there's some interesting mixing of the very easy to look up formal arrangements we all know well now and the very vague and difficult to navigate cluster**** that is the informal era.

Informal, time wise, is the era a lot of people call lineal. I say informal because lineal takes a stance on claimants. Which isn't something I am interested in telling people, willing to share but not my motive. I think historians have done us a disservice by presenting who they felt has the best claim per era per division rather than presenting the full list of championship claims, who made them, and why. I'm willing to tell my readers who are all the claimants, why they are making those claims, and what my personal feelings are, but, I think it is morally wrong to write books that boldly claim X is champion and here are the reasons but doesn't bother to give reason why he may not be.


That said, once you jump back in time to the informal era what you have are champions based on claim and nothing else. The public would endorse whoever they wanted to and often endorse contradictory claims because they liked both fighters. Historians who chart lineal and call fighters champions definitively in an era when there is no authority to say this man is or is not a champion more or less tend to fall back on the public reaction or endorsement for legitimacy when they make the claim X was champion of Y division in 1852 or some such year. Usually, with a dash of bias here and there and just a touch of inconsistency.

Some guys have pretty inarguable claims, they beat the last guy, they are the champion.

Other guys have more arguable claims, some were simply elected champion and fought no one. Others were part of known plots and legitimately never won a real boxing match their entire career. Historians present them all like they are equals.

That's why my own HW champs from ancient to now list deals in every single claimant. I'm not telling you who is legitimate, or lineal, just who was called champion and when. That's it. You have to ask me for information like who are the lineals or traditionally accepted lineal champions. I'm not out to teach you that, I'm out to teach you the HW champions period, under anyone's version of legitimacy you'll find every champion on my list plus loads you might call less than legitimate.

Championships themselves being dictated by claims and endorsement, often contrary, means any stipulation to that championship is also just a claim. What a division even meant was decided by champions and changed by champions.

Which explains why I have only released the Heavyweights and the Authorities. Weight divisional history is more difficult than the history of rules, orgs, and laws combined with the history of the HWs even if you take both all the way back to ancient times and only pick up divisional history in the 18th century.

Saying a division existed in 1738 is like saying lineal existed in 1738. It's a very simplistic, propagandist, statement that doesn't really capture what people were living with back then, but, it is not untrue. Men claimed to be champions of divisions, the names and weights of those divisions changed with those claims, and popularity means your name will never die. So if you make a list strictly in name "lightweight" you'll leave our great champions who weighed 130. If you say 130 you'll leave out great champions who were called LW. If you sat okay I'll combined both, you might leave out a very popular champion without being loose on one of those...who leaves out a legend for a pound or two?

Everything about a champion is debatable prior to the NSC and even then minor debates could be had on subjects like divisions until the NBA/NYSAC.

What I mean is, you've seen how people debate lineal? This is like lineal except way, way, way more aspects and people to consider.

Which I think explains why by the time of formalization there were already way more smaller divisions than larger. Going to be more claims in and around the size most people are isn't there?

I think my last closer was still good. BW wasn't because of claims, but, as man gets bigger we continue to fill in the gaps because we can. The more people there are the more there's going to be but why we have so many now and some many small ones is because we were tiny people for a long time.

[elfag]

I don't think words mean what you think they mean.

Worse, I don't think you realize how obvious it is to others when you try to change the subject every time you're wrong.

Are you here to discuss the topic in the thread or are you here to **** up another thread with your whining? We get it. You're broke and you get triggered when other people aren't broke. That's your problem, not mine.

fraudcel detected