One Step Forward, Four Steps Back – the Frustrating World Title Scene in Boxing
Firstly, I’d like to offer my apologies for my long absence from here. It’s been a very busy time for me in the day job lately! With that said, there are lots of topics that I would like to write about but the one that is currently bugging me the most is that ever-reliable source of annoyance, the professional boxing championship picture. I am frequently asked here questions that run along the lines of “how many championships are there in boxing” and so on, and the answer is always the same: “they are beyond counting”. In recent years the number of unification matches made between holders of the different alphabet titles has increased, which I have written about before as a positive, since it promises to reduce the vast amount of confusion that surrounds the sport. However, the last couple of years have also seen a vast and, seemingly, inexplicable increase in the amount of championships being handed out, more than off-setting any gains made by unification bouts.
The World Boxing Association, the oldest of the sanctioning bodies that we refer to as “alphabets” these days recognizes 17 weight classes in professional boxing today. Nevertheless, at the end of 2011 they had somehow managed to crown 37 world champions in these weight classes! Between elevating some champions to “Super Champion” status and undermining others with the introduction of Interim Champions they have managed, on their own, to average more than two champions per weight class. Now, in his Christmas message the President of the WBA did respond to the criticism that this situation is understandably drawing and he made some fair points in the defence of his organization that I will consider later on. He also intimated that the group would look closely at the legitimacy of Interim Champions in future and even hinted that they may be removed altogether if necessary. However, it is the Super Champions that really annoy me at the moment.
By and large, the WBA recognizes somebody as a “Super Champion” when they hold more than one of the big four alphabet belts. This in itself is fair enough. However, what they then do is vacate the “regular” WBA title, allowing them to crown two world champions simultaneously! For example, when David Haye lost to Wladimir Klitschko, Klitschko became the WBA Heavyweight Champion. However, since he was already the IBF, IBO and WBO Champion the WBA immediately installed Klitschko as Super Champion and then sanctioned a match between Ruslan Chagaev and Alexander Povetkin for the regular title, meaning that Wladimir Klitschko is now the WBA Heavyweight Super Champion and Alexander Povetkin is the WBA Heavyweight Champion! How ludicrous is that? The reason for this insane behaviour, of course, is that the WBA get to sanction more Championship matches and thereby earn more sanctioning fees. The fact that this is ruining boxing is seemingly just a sad side effect.
Interim Champions, while also annoying, are not quite such a problem in my eyes. Basically, an Interim Champion is crowned if the current champion is expected to vacate his belt or in danger of being stripped of it for some reason. Where the champion’s status is thus in doubt and Interim Champion is crowned who is awarded the full championship at the relevant time, if the champion does not fight him before then. Personally, I don’t see why we can’t just call these guys Number One Contenders but at least the logic is clear. Moreover, the WBA are by no means the only ones doing this. The WBO frequently crown Interim Champions as well. Personally, I just think that Interim Championships should not carry any recognition as being actual world titles. I don’t think that an Interim Champion should be allowed to call himself any kind of World Champion until, and unless, he is acknowledged as being the full World Champion by the relevant sanctioning body.
Another group muddying the waters are the WBC, the second oldest and in many ways the most widely known of the sanctioning bodies. They also recognize Interim Champions but they didn’t like the sound of that so they changed the name to WBC Silver Champion! This, said WBC President Jose Sulaiman, would add value to fights that could not be for a WBC Championship but would nevertheless be of great significance. He did not mention anything about how this would dilute the significance of championship belts in general. But wait, there’s more! Since this alone would not do enough to actually confuse the title picture, the WBC also decided to add some more title belts.
The first of these is the WBC Diamond belt and this is actually not a bad idea at all. It is just that, thanks to the extreme proliferation of belts generally people often mistake the significance of the Diamond Belt. A Diamond Belt is awarded to commemorate an especially great fight. It cannot be defended in the ring and is therefore not a championship belt as such. It is a one-time only trophy awarded to a boxer to celebrate a particular accomplishment. As such, I like the idea but wish some other trophy, rather than a championship belt, could have been chosen. Much more annoying, however, is the creation of the “Champion Emeritus”.
The WBC can, at their discretion, make one or more boxers Champion Emeritus at each weight class. This is an award for life and is intended to honour the great WBC Champions. However, with no real standard of entry it just adds yet more confusion to the title picture. Vitali Klitschko, for example, is a fair example of a great WBC Champion. He has held that belt on more than one occasion for a long time. If the WBC wishes to honour him for that, fair enough. The same goes for Lennox Lewis. Why, though can people like Sergio Martinez be awarded the same honour after holding a WBC title for less than a year? The answer is simple. When a WBC Champion may possibly lose the belt due to injury or some other non-ring related reason they can now make that man a Champion Emeritus, allowing them to vacate his title while still recognizing him as a champion and also guaranteeing him a title shot should he later decide he wants one. This was the case when an eye injury forced Mikkel Kessler to vacate the WBC Super-Middleweight Championship.
Between all this and with the IBF frequently making their champions face ludicrous mandatory defences or lose their belts whenever they become unified champions, as when they stripped Joe Calzaghe of the title soon after he won it, thereby ensuring that their next champion had zero credibility, it is entirely possible that each weight class could have nine or more “world champions” just from the big four sanctioning bodies alone! Apart from the obvious reason that more champions equals more sanctioning fees, why is this? Moreover, what can and should be done about it? The first question is relatively simple to answer and was indeed addressed by the WBA President last month.
In a word, the reason for this crazy proliferation of titles is this: television. TV companies are the guys that stump up the bulk of the money for boxing today and they want title fights. They have decided that, with a very few exceptions, their audience only want to watch title fights so they want as many fights as possible to fall into that category. If that means creating more and more irrelevant titles until every boxer vaguely worthy of the label “world level” has a belt of his own then so be it. As Gilberto Mendoza said, even if the WBA did away with all of its Interim Champions that would not remove this demand and other organizations would simply fill the void. So, what is to be done? The obvious solution for us, as fans, is simply to make sure that we watch every good non-title bout that is on TV. If TV producers can see that non-title boxing is a worthy attraction then they will stop putting pressure on sanctioning bodies to create championships and start putting pressure on them to make worthy matches.
However, I also think that the ultimate goal of every fight fan is to reach that time when we only have one real world champion and, ultimately, for that to happen, we need to have only one sanctioning body. If national boxing bodies, like the British Board of Boxing Control could just endorse one of the sanctioning bodies and refuse to recognize the others then, eventually, I think we would get to that stage. Maybe Governments could have a role to play in this as well. Someone has to regulate boxing at some point and it clearly will not happen from within. In the spirit of this, therefore, I will take the first step myself. Soon, Marshall Law will only recognize one sanctioning body. I will, of course, still point out who holds what, and so on but only one group will have the honour of having their titlists dignified with the name “World Champion” and on these pages.
The question, of course, is which one? I will make the case for and against each possible arbiter and then you, my readers will help me choose. In my next article I’ll look at some of the contenders. See you then!
Marshall Law 