What type of fights should a beltholder take?

[Lomasexual]

Ok, so you pick up a strap. What is the expectation for your next fight?

1. You take on the toughest challenge you can find, regardless of division, belts or catchweights?
2. You look to unify?
3. You look for the biggest money making fight?
4. You take care of your mandatories?
5. You take on the person you have the biggest rivalry or grudge against?

Or something else?

[Tony Trick-Pony]

It all comes down to business. It's about who you can get and who will take the offered money and so forth. Boxing is a business first, a sport second.

[boliodogs]

A confident new champion who believes he can beat any boxer in his weight class would be doing 1,2,3 and 4. He would want to fight the best and highest rated fighters in his weight class that he could get a fight with. He would want to beat the other champs in his weight class to prove he is the best at that weight. He would want to get high paying fights but usually fighting the best boxers or the other champs makes him the most money anyway. He has to fight his mandatory challenger before the deadline to keep his title. Fighting the fighter he has the biggest grudge against is not what a good new champion should do unless that fighter is a high ranked guy or another champion.

[boliodogs]

I think a new champion should stay in his own weight class unless he is young and outgrowing that weight class. Nobody likes catchweight fights and fighting above your best fighting weight is a good way to lose when nobody can beat you at your best fighting weight. Look what happened to excellent boxers Donaire and Gonzalez when they moved up too many weight classes to fight bigger, stronger, harder hitting men.

[TheBigLug]

Ideally they look to unify the belts, or at least take on the best fighters available between mandatory obligations. There's no point in calling yourself a champion if you're not facing good competition.

Obviously we know it doesn't work this way.

[Eff Pandas]

First off there should be just one belt. And he should fight a top 3 guy each time out. With how things work today I think "THE CHAMPION" of a division should fight a top 3 guy each time out (title holder or nah) & everyone else in the top 10 should be trying to fight each other to get to a top 3 spot to be able to fight "THE CHAMPION".

[The Problem Child]

Once you get that belt, YOU GO UP IN WEIGHT AND CONQUER THE NEXT DIVISION AND SO ON. Like Conor did. THEN ONCE YOU CONQUER YOUR SPORT, YOU GO AND TAKE OVER ANOTHER SPORT.