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It'd probably be fair to say there's no true lineal champ right now. As it stands, he's the only active heavyweight that won his titles by beating the fighter who was the clear number 1 at the time. But he hasn't got those titles anymore.
You can't say that about AJ or Wilder, they never won their belts that way.Comment
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Shameless drug cheat Tyson Fury is lucky to be boxing at all
Matt ****inson, Chief Sports Writer
There comes a point when the Tyson Fury bandwagon needs halting, or at least slowing or steering in the right direction, closer to the truth — and it was surely reached this week when the boxer proclaimed his pride as the lineal heavyweight champion of the world.
Amid the alphabet spaghetti of boxing boards and belts, this is the idea that there can be only one champion in each weight. Fury makes claim to be the heavyweight — in a celebrated lineage including Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and Mike Tyson — from his victory over Wladimir Klitschko in November 2015.
“I hold it with pride, respect and honour and it means more to me than any belt ever anyway,” Fury said. “To have that great lineage going back to the days of John L Sullivan all the way to today, to have my name among those greats is a very big achievement.”
Except there is a very significant snag about that argument — even before we get to highly dubious boasts about respect and honour. It is a problem that has been so quickly passed over in the past few days of celebrating Fury’s pugilism that it surely needs restating, loudly.
To those of us who cover doping in other sports, it remains startling how Fury’s conviction for taking a steroid is reduced to the sort of jab that he could deflect away as inconsequential.
Fury accepted a backdated two-year ban after testing positive for nandrolone in February 2015, something that would be the reputational death of Chris Froome or Mo Farah or most other prominent British athletes.
Consider the harsh scrutiny they have come under, the su****ion that Froome and Farah have borne, without evidence that either has ever touched a banned substance. BBC Sports Personality of the Year? A doping conviction would bring banishment to a sporting hall of shame.
Yet in the Fury narrative, it is as though the doping offence and ban was a minor blemish, an inconvenience to be quickly forgotten. It is all very strange in a country that prides itself on being so unforgiving of cheats.
Lineal champion? Respect and honour? Fury should not even have been in the ring in November 2015 when he beat Klitschko to win the IBF, WBA and WBO heavyweight titles.
He failed a test for a notorious steroid long abused in sport, an offence that would have triggered a four-year ban had UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) not made crass procedural errors, charging Fury and Hughie, his cousin, 16 months after urine samples were provided.
Fury had also been charged for refusing to take a drugs test in September 2016 but that was withdrawn in a messy compromise. Ukad admitted the case cost it almost £600,000, or about 7 per cent of its annual budget, which is why it sought a truce despite maintaining the assertion that a serious breach had taken place.
As for Fury’s insistence that the drug got into his system by eating uncastrated wild boar, whatever happened to our usual cynicism towards such excuses? The expectation of contrition as the first step to rehabilitation?
There has been none of that from Fury, not even a willingness to answer questions, just blithe dismissals that he has not failed a test before or since. He is contemptuous of the ban he never properly served. “I wasn’t going to box anyway in them two years,” he once said. “Took some time out, sniffed a few drugs, shagged a few women, drank a few beers, smoked a bit of weed, done a bit of magic, MDMA, crack . . .”
Who knows when he is telling the truth but he is laughing all the way to the bank. In the case of the dodgy boar, the public seem very happy to swallow it whole.
Perhaps this says a lot about boxing. For all the courage of the combatants, it is part sport, part circus. This is an arena where “baddest man on the planet” is a badge of honour, and Fury cuts a compelling figure. Perhaps people doubt how much the drugs work when two big men are battering each other, which is terrible complacency. Maybe they simply do not care.
That laxity has allowed Fury to bathe in glory, and his comeback is certainly remarkable given all he has been through with ballooning weight, recreational drug use and battling serious issues of mental health.
No one can doubt his resolve in twice climbing off the floor on his way to that controversial draw in his fight for Deontay Wilder’s WBC heavyweight title in Los Angeles on Saturday night.
He has made himself hard to ignore, a cult figure greeted with acclaim at Old Trafford on Wednesday evening as he watched the Manchester United team he supports draw with Arsenal.
Presumably it helps his image now that he shies away from parading offensive views, such as equating ****sexuality with *****philia. Whether he still holds bigoted opinions is another matter.
He has said that he will give all the proceeds, as much as $10 million (about £8 million), from the Wilder bout to the poor and homeless. Good for him, if so. We look forward to hearing more.
There will be much more money to come, almost certainly from a lucrative rematch. In the run-up to the return, you can be sure we will hear plenty about how he was robbed. “A complete injustice,” Fury said at Old Trafford.
But it is a particularly brazen phrase from someone who should count himself very lucky to be back in sport at all.
Why the male anger about women’s sport? How depressing — but wearyingly predictable — to read much of the response to
Matthew Syed’s piece this week about Ada Hegerberg and the crass request for her to twerk on stage at the Ballon D’Or ceremony.
What is it about so many men that they have to vent their rage at any article defending/promoting women’s sport as though it threatens the very foundations of the castle from which they peer down, so condescendingly, on 50 per cent of the population.
This reaction is becoming all too familiar. I expected staunch opposition to my idea for a mixed Ryder Cup floated in October — and I was not disappointed — but there was so much anger and aggression. So many men could not just say it was a bad plan but felt a need to belittle women’s sport.
They said it was virtue signalling. Other arguments usually rolled out are that women’s sport is being “forced” on them (as if you cannot turn the page or change the channel), that women are rubbish (all of them, apparently) and that we do not need all this political correctness.
All of which makes me absolutely sure that we need many more articles challenging ourselves to consider decades of (male) neglect of women’s sport and our open-mindedness to its potential over the decades ahead.Comment
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On the contrary, that is the exact point of this thread, namely: Is a lineal championship the type of thing that can be 'stripped' from a person, or 'given back'? And if so, who by?
For what it's worth, Fury has the best claim, out of anyone, to be lineal. In other words, if anyone is lineal it's Fury. And if it's not Fury, then nobody is lineal right now. Simple.Comment
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you cant strip lineage...lolComment
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When the linage is broken (in this case, it was due to Lewis's retirement) a new linage is created when the #1 and #2 in the division fought. Wlad was considered Lineal champion when he beat Chagaev.
Contrary to belief, Holmes wasn't considered Lineal when he beat Ali (not at first) it was when he beat Norton. Ali coming back and losing to Holmes just took away any doubt on who was lineal.Comment
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