How Much Does It Really Mean, To Be A World Champion Nowadays?

[Larry the boss]

Sometimes getting all 4 doesn't even mean much, so many fighters are winning vacant titles or just getting belts handed to them

[Tony Trick-Pony]

wba wbc ibf just got triggered!

Lennox Lewis' little cuz got it doe

[FinitoxDinamita]

Real titles and paper titles cant be ignored. Young fighters fight for titles because that’s like a lottery ticket.

[GMAN SUPREME]

ibo will be next! boxing will have 5 officially recognized world title belts yay!

[Tony Trick-Pony]

ibo will be next! boxing will have 5 officially recognized world title belts yay!

I really wouldn't be surprised.

I used to dig that IBC root beer title.

A BBC title will be next. Loma will beat Robert Easter for it on the opening weekend of Black Panther 2 and cause a riot.

[Long jabber]

There are too many world championships in each division now to realistically win them all, with very very rare exception.

Two fighters in history managed to unify all four titles. Once the fourth belt became a requirement of being "undisputed," fighters decided it wasn't worth the trouble to try to become undisputed anymore. That's one of the biggest detriments caused by accepting the WBO. Unifying the division went from a regular occurrence to a near impossibility.

It wasn't that long ago that at any given time, the sport had four or five undisputed champions. Heavyweight, light heavyweight, middleweight and welterweight in particular had lengthy runs with an undisputed champion, if not multiple.

You even had Winky at super welter & Tszyu at super light.

But undisputed champions are never going to be a regularly occurring thing again thanks to the horrible four belt era.

So just like tennis has multiple grand slams and golf has multiple majors, boxing has multiple world championships.

I disagree because we have a definition for champion and it doesn't fit what you're describing. Champion to me means more than winning a title, to be a champion you gotta beat everyone worth beating. You can call that nerdy or dumb but it doesn't take away from the fact that earning an award(belts) doesn't give you the prestige of being the guy that beat everyone(definition of champion)

Also where is the romance, I know it's a sport but why is champion in sports these days held to such a low standard. To be called a champion in the past meant more than what it means today

[Slicc]

ibo will be next! boxing will have 5 officially recognized world title belts yay!

Then Euwank Jr can brag about how he had the IBO belt before it was mainstream.

[N/A]

That would be news to me. I’ve never read about a heavyweight champion that rivaled Dempsey, for instance, nor a welterweight champ that contended with Robinson. Can you cite examples of historical championship rivalries, pre-1970s?

The IBU was founded in 1910. A few decades later, the IBU became the EBU, which still controls European boxing to this day. The IBU/EBU recognized world champions until several of the biggest and most influential organizations in boxing, including the EBU, joined together to create the World Boxing Council. However, the IBU/EBU title wasn't considered as prestigious as the NYSAC world championship, so the NYSAC championship was quickly merged as well. So the current WBC world championship is actually the IBU title dating back to 1910 and the NYSAC dating back to the early 1920s, merging together.

The NBA was founded in the early 1920s as well and later became the WBA. The WBA has split twice though, leading to the creation of the IBF and WBO. So you really have to unify the WBA, IBF & WBO titles to have the original NBA lineage, while winning the WBC gives you the IBU/NYSAC lineage. The IBU, NYSAC & NBA were the major titles a hundred years ago.

While there were multiple world titles a hundred years ago, it wasn't until the 1920s and 1930s that they were frequently getting split up.

So for instance, in 1933, Ben Jeby was NYSAC world middleweight champion, even though Marcel Thil was the unified IBU/NBA world middleweight champion.

Maxie Rosenbloom was undisputed light heavyweight champion in the early 1930s, but was stripped by the NBA. He continued as NYSAC world champion for several years while the NBA crowned other champions.

There are countless examples of this.

The reason so many falsely believe that there used to be one champion per division is because there was an undisputed heavyweight champion for a long time. The heavyweight championship was so much more important to the public than any other division (as it should be, the other divisions are gimmicks, the heavyweight champion is the champion of the sport), that as long as there was one heavyweight champion, there was a lot more tolerance for splintered titles in other divisions.

[N/A]

the super bowl is always played between the two best teams in the sport.

That's debatable, but it is always played between the two conference champions. The two regional champions play each other every year to crown a world champion and it's easy for the public to follow.

But what if the NFL and AFL never merged and we still had two world champions? Or worse, the USFL survived and we had three world champions? Or the XFL survived as well and we had four world champions? It would certainly hurt the popularity of the sport. That is what has happened in boxing.

However, in football, they're really just crowning the champion of America's #1 league. There may be smaller leagues in America or smaller leagues in other countries like Canada, but one league pays so much more money that for the most part, all of the best players participate and therefore, the public believes the winner is the best.

This is why the TV networks in the US made such a mistake getting behind the sanctioning bodies. The US desperately needs a UFC style league that is so dominant, the public accepts that company's champion as the true world champion of the sport, even if other champions are being crowned in smaller companies or overseas in companies the US public doesn't care about.

[N/A]

trade the wba in for the wbo and get rid of the wba at least the wbo doesn't have multiple belts.

Why trade when we can stop recognizing the WBA and just have two champions?