Title defenses is just an excuse for fighting bums

[nino brown21]

belts are just used as bargaining chips. that's why theres so many of them. always better selling an event when there's a title involved. not to mention them sanctioning fees boi!!!!

[_Rexy_]

yeah, it's better to hop around and face real killers like Rocky Fielding.

[Larry the boss]

Yeah title defences count for nothing... Hagler’s title win over Minter is much more valuable than his defences over those bums like Hearns and Duran.

Joe Louis should have just retired in 1937, no point making a load of defences against all those bums.

Did you ever stop to look at who those defenses where against and the people he was fighting "BUM OF THE MONTH" look it up

[TonyGe]

Title defense were implemented to stop champions from fighting only bums. The problem is now with the numerous sanctioning bodies and weight classes the number of quality fighters ranked by each organization has thinned out.

[JohnCastellanos]

Ahh, damn that is an entirely different animal.

If given the full range of history I was going to go with the fellas who literally bought championships or title fights.

Just in Queensberry my focus would have been the early guys, Sullivan, Corbett, even Fitzs, who I really appreciate.

Just a demand for the best to fight the best though? That's not lineal, that is the mandate of the bodies, they just suck at it.

Lineal really means champion controlled. No matter how you cut it, no matter what rules you agree are lineal and what are not what is true is the champion controls that crown. Under that we had just god awful boxing. The bodies came with this cool idea we should rank fighters and force champions to fight the best ranks. Then they ****ed that up.


There is no beef between you and I, I too think the bodies are **** ups.


The boxers won't save us. Give them more power and they'll act just like the old champs did. Don't believe me? Check Money, he acts just like Corbett used to; above boxing.

The bodies corruption comes from the boxers. The bodies are in no way behooved to create hypejobs. The boxers are incentivised to work the body's rules to get the highest ranking they can regardless of fair. The bodies themselves could care less about promotion. They don't even promote themselves, of course they are not behind the scenes ****ing up boxing to promote a bum into position. The bodies do not control career paths either. His promoter and manager do that.


What boxing needs is the bodies to come back together and form one singular entity so that the boxer quit playing one against the other.


People blame the sanctioning bodies for giving boxers a place to hide, which is true, if you don't like one of them you have three others to work with, but what is also true is the bodies don't then tell the boxers hey, go hide from my mandates by fighting for my competitor. The champs do that on their own....promoters, managers....kinda on their own.

Yeah recently I got a thing I do it go’s like this: “Well lineally he’s accomplished more than that guy!” And I use this argument with the folks that bring up title defenses. My whole reasoning is “he’s basically the man who beat the man.” Example: Lineally the IBF strap belongs to Canelo because he lost it over politics. Now ggg lost it the same way but Canelo beat him and then beat Jacobs who was the actual champion. I also do it with Fury, I tell ppl that if he can beat AJ he could vacate the titles and lineally still be recognized as an undisputed champ

[RJJ-94-02=GOAT]

Did you ever stop to look at who those defenses where against and the people he was fighting "BUM OF THE MONTH" look it up

“Bum of month” is completely incorrect if you actually look it up. The vast majority of Louis title defences came against top 10 ranked HW’s. People make fun of guys like Galento, Pastor or Godoy but they were all top 3 ranked HW’s at the time Louis beat them. On top of that he beat guys like Schmeling, Walcott, Conn and John Henry Lewis all legit Hall of Famers. “Bum of the month” is a essentially a myth man...

[Combat Talk Radio]

I agree that it is completely meaningless in modern boxing. I don't care about it at all. You definitely can't compare eras using title belts as any kind of measure.

Here’s a comparison of 2009-2019 and 1969-1979 welterweight title lineages.

1969-1979

WBC – 28 title fights

Jose Napoles 1969-1970
Billy Backus 1970
Jose Napoles 1970-1975
John Stracey 1975-1976
Carlos Palomino 1976-1979
Wilfred Benitez 1979

WBA – 28 title fights

Jose Napoles 1969-1970
Billy Backus 1970
Jose Napoles 1970-1975 vacated
Angel Espada 1975-1976 (defeated Clyde Gray for the vacant belt, Gray ranked top 4 at welter from ’72-’76)
Pipino Cuevas 1976-1979

So for that decade we had 8 champions, 1 vacated belt, 56 title fights.

2009-2019

WBA – 15 title fights

Vyacheslav Senchenko (who?) 2009-2012
Paulie Malignaggi 2012-2013
Adrien Broner 2013
Marcos Maidana 2013 vacated
Keith Thurman 2015-2016 (beat Robert Guerrero for the vacant belt) vacated
Lamont Peterson 2017 (beat Avenasyan for the vacant belt) vacated
Lucas Matthysse 2018 (beat Tewa Kiram for the vacant belt)
Manny Pacquiao 2018-2019 and now the belt is vacant

WBC – 16 title fights

Andre Berto 2008-2011
Victor Ortiz 2011
Floyd Mayweather 2011-2015 vacated
Danny Garcia 2016-2017 (beat Robert Guerrero for the vacant belt)
Keith Thurman 2017 vacated
Shawn Porter 2018-2019 (beat Danny Garcia for the vacant belt)

IBF – 19 title fights

Isaac Hlatshwayo 2009 (beat Delvin Rodriguez for the vacant belt)
Jan Zaveck 2009-2011
Andre Berto 2011 vacated
Randall Bailey 2012 (beat Mike Jones for the vacant belt)
Devon Alexander 2012-2013
Shawn Porter 2013-2014
Kell Brook 2014-2017
Errol Spence 2017-2019

WBO – 20 title fights

Miguel Cotto 2009
Manny Pacquiao 2009-2012
Tim Bradley 2012-2014
Manny Pacquiao 2014-2015
Floyd Mayweather 2015 vacated
Tim Bradley 2015 (beat Brandon Rios for the vacant belt) vacated
Jessie Vargas 2016 (beat Sadam Ali for the vacant belt)
Manny Pacquiao 2016-2017
Jeff Horn 2017-2018
Terence Crawford 2018-2019

For this decade we have 24 champs, 8 vacated belts, 70 title fights.

This is all to say that even though 4 of the very best fighters in the world for the decade (Mayweather, Pacquiao, Crawford, Spence) did much of their work in the welterweight division, there were still 20 other fighters that won "title" fights in the decade. And if we are using a criteria to rank wins based on whether or not a guy beat a beltholder, then we are saying that this era was vastly better than the 70’s simply because a bunch of suits handed out belts left and right.

" Manny Pacquiao 2018-2019 and now the belt is vacant"

Source, that Manny vacated the WBA welterweight belt?

[touch_of_sleep]

" Manny Pacquiao 2018-2019 and now the belt is vacant"

Source, that Manny vacated the WBA welterweight belt?

He didn't.

I copied and pasted an old post from last year. He was elevated to some WBA bull**** belt so they could hand out another vacant WBA welter belt to the Bes*****-Butaev winner. That happened after I put that list together.

[ShaneMosleySr]

Just like every other era in heavyweight boxing history, besides the 70s and the 90s, a heavyweight champion dominated all the competition.

If you look at every heavyweight in history that had a dominant run, they beat people that don’t compare to them.

It’s common sense.

Joe Louis is the best because he was able to do it way longer than anyone else, in a one belt, everyone fights everyone era that was interrupted by a world war.

So please, let’s not diminish the accomplishments of Joe Louis.

Did you ever stop to look at who those defenses where against and the people he was fighting "BUM OF THE MONTH" look it up

[Citizen Koba]

Flawed as it may be the ranking and mandatory system is the only thing that legitimises boxing Champions and Championships at all. Main problem of course is simply the muliplicity of Sanctioning organisations dividing the talent pool and devaluing each others titles.