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!
Why One Fight Didn’t Happen and Another One Shouldn’t
The first thing I want to look at this week is the cancellation, once again, of the proposed fight between David Haye and Wladimir Klitschko, along with the restoration of the fight between Klitschko and Dereck Chisora. The unification match between Haye and Klitschko had never looked more likely to happen. Travel companies were already advertising package deals for the fight in the boxing press. Then, at the very last moment, Klitschko announced that he would fight Chisora after all. For most fight fans, it is all extremely frustrating. Worse still, Haye could not simply switch his sights to Vitali Klitschko, since the older brother had already signed to fight Cuban heavyweight Odlanier Solis in March.
The big question now is this: whose fault is it? Most people seem to be blaming Haye, largely as a result of earlier failures to bring this fight off. I, however, think that it is Wladimir that is the problem here. His story simply does not add up. He claims that the fight foundered on Sky’s insistence that they would not show the fight within a fortnight of their broadcast of Amir Khan’s next bout. Sky, for their part, retaliated that, firstly, they had no say in the negotiations for this fight and that, secondly, they have shown boxing pay per view events within three weeks of each other just last year and would have been entirely willing to show the fight two weeks after Khan’s. They would be right to do so; any British boxing fan with the disposable income would pay for both fights.
Even if we accept that, however, Klitschko’s story still rings dubious. He claims that Haye is ducking him, since he offered Sky (and Haye) the alternative of a July fight but that the British fighter would not take it. Given that Wladimir has already agreed a fight with Tomasz Adamek in September, this would see him fight three times in the space of less than six months. If he were Chris Eubank, this might be believable but the fact is that Wladimir has not had three fights in that kind of time frame since he became a world champion over a decade ago. In fact, it is only in three of the last ten years that he has had three fights in a calendar year at all, each time spread out over a period of nine or ten months. Are we seriously to believe that he would do so at this stage of the game?
Haye looks like he will make a mandatory defence against former champion Ruslan Chagaev, an uninspiring bout if truth were told. In fairness, though, Haye can honestly say that he is fighting Chagaev because there is no other fight out there for him. Wladimir is taking on Chisora when there are other options. It seems that Klitschko junior sees Chisora as a safe option, a comfortable warm-up for the real business of facing Adamek. He may be right. Perhaps Chisora will just be too inexperienced and will be overpowered by the WBO, IBF and IBO Champion. Klitschko is good; no one would deny that. I believe that he is good enough to beat Haye. At the same time, Haye is good enough to beat Klitschko and certain variables favour the Englishman. Haye has far superior speed to Wladimir and has genuine knockout power. In his last few fights no one has gotten near Klitschko but the facts are that Haye stops people and Klitschko has been stopped five times. I can see why Klitschko would not want this fight and Haye’s insistence that he retires this year, no matter what may have convinced Klitschko that he can simply wait him out.
This may all work out well for Haye, however. If he beats Chagaev, as he should, then assuming Vitali Klitschko comes through his fight with Solis Haye can pursue a fight with him, possibly the last fight in the careers of both men. In the meantime, it is my hope that Chisora surprises Wladimir and beats him. Chisora has said that he wants to beat Wladimir and then face Vitali but if he should emerge victorious a fight with Haye would be a British box-office sensation, very hard to turn down. It is (just) possible that the Klitschkos will find themselves frozen out as the really big money goes elsewhere. Wouldn’t that be funny?
On to other news and at the anachronistic BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards Carl Froch was once again talking up the possibility of tempting Joe Calzaghe out of retirement to face him. I don’t think for a minute that this fight is actually going to happen but even so, here is my analysis of why it should not go ahead. Put simply, the negative consequences of defeat outweigh the positives of victory for both men, at least in my view. Obviously, the fight would be huge in Britain if it did happen. Both men would stand to make a lot of money and TV broadcasters would be lining up to screen it. However, Froch is still in the Super Six tournament, which means that his next fight, against Glen Johnson is already sealed. If he should win that, and I think he will do so quite comfortably, as Johnson is now well past his prime, that means he will be set for another fight in the final. That probably ties up Froch for most of 2011, which makes Calzaghe another year into his retirement when the fight supposedly happens.
The main lure for Froch is recognition. The two-time WBC Super-Middleweight Champion is Britain’s best kept boxing secret today. He has beaten the likes of Jean Pascal, current Light-Heavyweight king, another former world champion in German Arthur Abraham and former undisputed Middleweight Champion Jermain Taylor, with his only loss coming in a close twelve rounder against Mikkel Kessler. By rights, he should be as celebrated as David Haye and Amir Khan. A lack of TV coverage has hurt him badly, however, and he is probably better known abroad than he is at home. A fight with Calzaghe would finally thrust him into the national consciousness and it is that that Froch understandably craves. For Calzaghe, the only real draw appears to be financial, although like many fighters before him, he has confessed to finding it difficult to adjust to life without boxing. There may also be some satisfaction to be had from finally shutting the mouth of a man that has called him out for the last five or six years.
So, let’s say the fight goes ahead. One would have to favour Froch, being younger and currently in the game, regularly fighting top class opposition. Froch is a stronger puncher but less gifted technically than Calzaghe. The Welshman would certainly have the edge in hand speed but would the years of retirement have slowed that legendary speed a touch? Calzaghe looks to be keeping himself in great shape but would probably want the fight at Light-Heavyweight or, as Froch has suggested, at a catchweight. This would mean that Froch would either have to step up to a new weight class or give away a reasonably substantial amount of weight. While Froch would be favourite, this would be no easy fight. Calzaghe’s chin is strong and he has never been beaten. There is a reason for that.
If Froch were to beat Calzaghe, the win would look very nice on his CV but there would be many that would say he had only beaten a man that had retired. Paradoxically, the easier Froch’s victory would be, the less credit he would gain for it. Moreover, if the victory were hard-fought, knowing the British love of a scrappy loser, most of the adulation would probably still go to Calzaghe. Worse yet, if Froch were to lose, he would have lost to a man that retired. The obvious conclusion that many would draw would be that, without Calzaghe, the Super-Middleweight division had become meaningless. Froch’s stock in this country would probably never recover from such a loss. Calzaghe, on the other hand, would be lionised in victory. The undefeated Super-Champion would have stepped out of retirement to beat the WBC Champ! The danger is that such a victory would tempt him to carry on still further. Jean Pascal is another man that has expressed a desire to fight Joe. If Calzaghe could beat Froch, why could he not beat Pascal? With each fight, Joe would further risk his pristine record and his health. Time catches up with everyone. Sooner or later, he would fall. If, on the other hand, Calzaghe simply lost to Froch, he would have come out of retirement only to lose that unbeaten record that he is so rightly proud of. Once the 0 comes off one’s record, it can never be restored. That alone is enough reason to stay retired.
Carl Froch is lucky that he never faced Joe Calzaghe. He may see it as something missing from his career but in my opinion Calzaghe in his prime would have slaughtered Froch. The Nottingham man’s warrior spirit would surely have carried him to the end of the fight but Joe would have been hitting him for fun for the whole twelve rounds. Froch may believe otherwise – indeed, as a champion boxer he should – but in any case, beating Calzaghe now would not give him the glory it would have brought in 2007. It would be worthwhile only for the money and the publicity. Froch needs to remember that Calzaghe himself toiled away in obscurity for years, deserving more credit and recognition than he ever got. It was only for the last three years of his career that Calzaghe was celebrated the way that he deserved to be. If Froch keeps beating his peers, his contemporaries, then that recognition will surely come in the end. Winning the Super Six and then pursuing a unification fight with Lucien Bute or his successor should be Froch’s only goals right now, not trying to provoke a response from a man whose time is past.
My Top Ten British Boxers Since 1990
Having not written anything here for a long time, I can only apologise; I have been extremely busy with other writing projects, not to mention work. That said, I have decided to take a break from the norm here at Marshall Law and look at boxing rather than wrestling for a change.
Just over twenty years ago Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn fought out one of the most eagerly anticipated boxing matches in the history of British boxing. The two decades since have been, by and large, a successful period for the sport in Britain, with many great fighters carving out impressive legacies. Here, I look back at my own personal top ten British boxers of the period.
10: Johnny Nelson. Sheffield Cruiserweight Nelson is a familiar face to viewers of Sky Sports but perhaps did not gain the recognition he deserved while his career lasted. Nelson’s career peaked with his 1999 victory over Carl Thompson for the WBO Cruiserweight Title, a belt that Nelson would hold for the next six years, making thirteen successful defences. Nelson retired in 2006, still WBO champ, after injury forced him to withdraw from a planned title defence against Enzo Maccarinelli.
9: Clinton Woods. Sheffield’s Clinton Woods took the long way about becoming a World Champion, being unsuccessful in three attempts before capturing the IBF Light-Heavyweight Championship in 2005. When one considers that his world title defeats came against such luminaries as Roy Jones Jr, Glen Johnson and Antonio Tarver that paints a picture of a man that never ducked the big fights. Woods’ biggest moment came when he successfully defended his IBF title against Glen Johnson, having drawn one match and lost another to the Jamaican legend. Woods retired after failing to regain his crown but his legacy was already assured.
8: Carl Froch. Nottingham’s “Cobra” is one of the many impressive Super-Middleweights Britain has produced in recent decades and may yet move further up this list. Losing the belt to Mikkel Kessler in a brutal war was no disgrace but Froch’s finest moment thus far has to be his successful title defence against former undisputed World Middleweight Champion Jermain Taylor. On Saturday night Froch produced another superb performance as he totally outclassed and outboxed German former champion Arthur Abraham to reclaim the WBC belt, making him a two-time champion. Froch has now proved that he can be as effective a boxer as he has been a brawler and is poised to face Glen Johnson in the semi-final of the Super Six competition; should he win that tournament, he will move further up this list.
7: Duke McKenzie. Not too many boxers get to be world champions; fewer still manage to achieve that distinction in two different weight classes. McKenzie belongs to that elite group who achieve the feat of being three weight world champs. Now a popular commentator with ITV, McKenzie worked his way from IBF Flyweight Champion to WBO Championships at Bantamweight and Super-Bantamweight. He even went on to win a British Championship in a fourth weight class, Featherweight but was unable to beat fellow Brit Steve Robinson in a bid to become a four-weight World Champ. Duke remains Britain’s only three-weight champion.
6: Nigel Benn. The Dark Destroyer was one of Britain’s best-loved and most recognisable fighters in the 1990s, best remembered for his intense rivalry with Chris Eubank. Although Benn failed to beat Eubank in their two matches, his career is littered with accomplishments. Benn won world titles at Middleweight and Super-Middleweight but his greatest moment was sadly tainted by tragedy. In 1995 Benn clashed with Gerald McClellan, rated by many as the world’s best pound-for-pound fighter at the time. Few gave Benn any chance of lasting the first three rounds, much less winning. When McClellan knocked Benn first to the canvas and then right out of the ring in the first round, the doom-mongers appeared to be right. Somehow, Benn made it to the bell and in the second round he came out breathing fire. The two then engaged in a ferocious war that saw Benn emerge triumphant in the tenth round but sadly left McClellan horrifically brain-damaged. The gallant American lost most of his sight and hearing and was confined to a wheelchair. Benn was never quite the same after that and retired the following year.
5: David Haye. The Haymaker still has yet to really prove himself at Heavyweight and may or may not have what it takes to beat one of the Klitschko brothers. Nevertheless, his legacy at Cruiserweight is already impressive and his combination of relentless speed and explosive knockout power make him one of the most exciting heavyweights ever to come out of Britain. His final fight at Cruiserweight saw him defeat fellow British champion Enzo Maccarinelli to add the WBO title to the WBC and WBA titles that he already held. He then took out giant Russian Nikolai Valuev to win the WBA World Heavyweight Championship, making him only the fifth Briton to win a major Heavyweight title. His decision to defend the title against Audley Harrison irked many but Haye is now in the perfect position to attempt to unify the division, as the impressive buy-rate for the Harrison fight will have solidified his image as a man worth fighting for the Klitschkos. Haye has the talent to go down as the greatest British heavyweight of all time.
4: Chris Eubank. Generally the villain of the piece in the eyes of most during his rivalry with Nigel Benn, Brighton-based Eubank was my boxing hero growing up. His showmanship, skills, power and granite chin made him the perfect boxing attraction. People would pay to see him get knocked out and shut up but he was good enough to ensure it would not happen. WBO Champion at both Middleweight and Super-Middleweight, Eubank’s defining nights came in his fights with Nigel Benn and Michael Watson. Eubank’s two fights with Benn were the biggest things British boxing had seen in decades and the Watson fights were not far behind. Sadly, Michael Watson was seriously brain-damaged in their second bout, partly due to improper medical provisioning by the BBBofC. After that tragedy, Eubank would never show the same killer instinct in the ring again. It was an ironic parallel to the career of his rival Nigel Benn. Nevertheless, Eubank remained a champion for a long time until Steve Collins finally divested him of his belt. A second defeat at the hands of the Irishman followed before Eubank took on Joe Calzaghe in a WBO title bout after Collins vacated the title. Even at this stage of his career Eubank was immensely dangerous and Calzaghe maintains to this day that Eubank gave him the hardest fight of his career. That was Chris Eubank’s last fight at Super-Middleweight. Pundits had suggested for some time that Eubank needed to step up a weight class but skipping the Light-Heavyweight division altogether and going all the way up to Cruiserweight was perhaps a bit much. His last fights were two gripping encounters with Carl Thompson for the WBO Cruiserweight Championship. They ended in brave defeats but something strange had happened. Having been a hated champion, Eubank won the crowd over with his defeats. The gutsy determination he showed finally proved that he was a true ring warrior and he retired having gained the adulation he had for so long deserved as a true boxing superstar.
3: Lennox Lewis. Although born in England and raised there to the age of 12, Lennox Lewis had difficulty persuading British boxing fans that he really was a Brit. His Canadian accent and the fact that he had boxed for Canada in the Olympics counted against him for a long time. In the end, Lewis won people over in the best way possible – through success. Lewis became Britain’s first World Heavyweight boxing champion since Bob Fitzsimmons when he won the WBC Championship in 1993. He would go on to regain the title twice in his career, making him one of only five men to do so in history, as well as adding the IBF and WBA titles to his resume. His losses to Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman led some to question his ability but they were the only defeats he ever suffered and he beat both men decisively in rematches. By the time he retired Lewis had conclusively demonstrated that he was the greatest heavyweight of his day and only the quality of his opposition stops him from claiming the top spot on this list. Nevertheless, one can do no more than beat the opposition available and Lewis did that time and time again. It seems that Lewis never quite got over the initially lukewarm reaction that British fight fans greeted him with; at the recent Haye-Harrison showdown, Lewis walked down to the ring having commented that he did not know what kind of reception to expect. The crowd greeted him with a rousing ovation and chants of “Lewis! Lewis!” before he even got to the ring and when he stood in the ring with Frank Bruno the two were cheered to the rafters. Characteristically, Lewis left the ring unobtrusively, leaving the applause to Bruno and demonstrating the self-effacing humility that may have prevented him from becoming quite the superstar that his talents deserved but ultimately helped endear him to his fans.
2: Ricky Hatton. Few British fighters have ever been regarded so affectionately as Manchester’s “Hitman”. The thrilling and aggressive Hatton really helped pick up British boxing when it briefly appeared to slump in the wake of the retirements of the likes of Eubank and Benn. Tearing through the ranks of the world’s Light-Welterweights, Hatton managed to be practically unbeatable while always seeming to be heart-stoppingly vulnerable, due to his propensity to cut easily. His boxing style was always straight-ahead fury, crunching body-shots bringing down a string of opponents. His defining moment came when he met Russian-Australian Kostya Tzuyu, the undisputed World Light-Welterweight Champion. Hatton handed the legendary champion his second-ever defeat and became the number one Light-Welterweight in the world. Hatton then stepped up to Welterweight, defeating Luis Collazo to become a two-weight world champion, before returning to Light-Welterweight and regaining his titles. A victory over the great Jose Luis Castillo then followed, further solidifying Hatton’s reputation as one of Britain’s truly great champions. Defeat finally came when Hatton met Floyd Mayweather Jr, then regarded as the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet. Hatton gamely went ten rounds at Welterweight, enduring some poor refereeing before Mayweather stopped him. Nevertheless, Hatton had earned the respect of one of the greatest boxers of all time and, when he returned to Light-Welterweight, he once again regained his crown, beating Juan Lazcano and Paulie Malignaggi. Hatton’s final fight came against Manny Pacquiao and the amazing Filipino became the only man ever to beat Hatton at Light-Welterweight when he stopped the Mancunian in the sixth round. Sadly, many seem to have let Hatton’s two defeats cloud his great accomplishments. The facts are that he lost two fights, to the two greatest boxers currently fighting today. He was a two weight world champion and was unquestionably the number one Light-Welterweight in the world for four years. It doesn’t get much better than that.
1: Joe Calzaghe. Some would say that the British do not know how to appreciate winners, preferring lovable losers. If ever that were true of a boxer, it is true of Joe Calzaghe. For most of his career, the Welsh wonder was dogged by undermining criticisms – his hands are too fragile, he doesn’t hit hard enough, he doesn’t fight the best opposition and so on – so let’s take a look at the cold hard facts. In 46 fights, Calzaghe won 46 matches against 45 opponents, 9 of whom were or went on to be World Champions in their own right. In beating the likes of Chris Eubank, Roy Jones Jr, Bernard Hopkins, Mikkel Kessler, Charles Brewer and Jeff Lacy Calzaghe proved himself to be the best of the best. His defining moment came when he took on Lacy having already been WBO Super-Middleweight Champion for almost nine years. Lacy had destroyed everyone he had fought, including former WBC Champion Robin Reid and was routinely being compared to the young Mike Tyson by virtue of his ferocious style. For all of Calzaghe’s doubters, this was the moment when he would finally be revealed for what he really was. The truth was certainly revealed that night. Calzaghe gave Lacy the beating of a lifetime, dominating him from the word go and never letting up. The American had no answer to Calzaghe’s speed, power and stamina and showed incredible determination just to make it to the end of the fight. Lacy has never looked the same since. That night, Calzaghe finally proved all of his critics wrong and he went on to unify all four of the Super-Middleweight crowns, the WBC, WBO, IBF and WBA, making him the first Super-Middleweight ever recognised as undisputed champion by The Ring magazine. That done, he went on to step up to Light-Heavyweight and take The Ring crown in that division as well, defeating Hall-of-Fame certainties Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. Calzaghe became only the fourth European World Champion to retire undefeated, his legacy unimpeachable.
Honourable mentions:
Frank Bruno. Although Frank’s greatest moments came in the 90s, I have ruled him out because too much of his career was spent in the 80s. He was better than many gave him credit for being, although never truly convincing at world level.
Prince Naseem Hamed. Probably the most obvious name missing from my list, I have left Hamed out simply because he should have achieved so much more than he did. He was a WBO Champion and had some great fights and great moments but he should have been looking to become an undisputed champion.
Amir Khan. Just a bit too soon for Amir, really. He may well make this list, especially since defeat seems to have woken him up to the realities of the pro fight game.
Criteria: in judging this, I have tried to take into account the skill of the boxer, the quality of their opposition and their levels of achievement, as well as intangibles such as the level of stardom they achieved. As far as world titles are concerned, I only recognise the “big four”, that is the WBA, WBC, WBO and IBF. There are many other world titles out there and sometimes, as in the case of Ricky Hatton’s WBU championship early in his career, or Wladimir Kitschko’s IBO championship now, a good boxer can make them mean something. A Ring magazine championship, although not being quite the same as one of the “alphabet” titles means most of all in my eyes, since The Ring magazine staff award belts only to undisputed champions and consider title lineage independent of boxing politics. Judging the quality of opposition is the hardest factor to take into account. In the piece on Lennox Lewis I pointed out that one can only beat the opposition one is able to face. That is true but judging him purely on the numbers alone, one would have to conclude, as George Foreman did, that Lennox Lewis is the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. His record as three-time world champion, equalling Ali’s feat, plus the fact that he suffered only two defeats, both avenged in decisive fashion at least bears comparison with anyone else’s. But does anyone actually believe that Lewis was better in his day than the likes of Louis, Ali, Norton, Frazier, Foreman or the young Tyson were in theirs?
That is why I gave Hatton the nod over Lewis in the end. Calzaghe at the top was easy but choosing between Hatton and Lewis was much harder. Both were three-time champions at their favoured weight. Both lost only two matches. But Hatton lost only to true all-time greats whereas Lewis lost to curiously poor rivals. Moreover, Hatton was a two-weight champion. Further, Hatton won his first real world title by beating a legendary champion; Lewis won his when Riddick Bowe vacated the belt rather than face him. It still counts but it’s not quite the same. In any case, I am sure that others will have other ideas and I invite disagreement cheerfully but I hope I have shown that I have thought long and hard about making the choices that I have.
Marshall Law 