To be champion or not to be champion, that is the boxing question

There has been a plethora of boxing on American television the last couple of months and most of the fights have been entertaining. Premium cable channels HBO, and Showtime, as well as ESPN, have led the way in showing quality boxing for the fans to devour. With these fights, there has been one common theme that has led me to do some critical thinking.

Along with plenty of punches, most of these fights have had some type of a title at stake. Interim titles, super titles, regular titles, silver titles, you name it.

So, I ask, are the winners of these title fights really considered champions in your mind? What criteria do you follow when recognizing a title holder as a champion? Are you consistent? Are you bias? Are you consistently biased?

I started watching boxing in the late 70’s. During this era there were two prominent sanctioning bodies that recognized champions, the WBC and the WBA. In the early 80’s the IBF became a sanctioning body that recognized champions, followed by the WBO in the late 80’s. There are more sanctioning bodies today that I will not mention, because, if your head is not spinning by now…

I will also stick to these four because these are what are considered the four legitimate sanctioning bodies by the fighters today, as well as many boxing fans and pundits. Meaning, any boxer who wins one of these titles have reached the top of the mountain in their minds.

Do we, the boxing fans and pundits, have the right to tell the fighters that sometimes when they win a title belt it is not in keeping with being a true World Champion? We do it all the time.

Sometimes it is easy to dismiss a title as bogus, like when Ernie Terrell was called the WBA Heavyweight Champion in 1965, or when Francisco Damiani was the WBO heavyweight champion when Mike Tyson was recognized as the undisputed champion. But it is not always that simple to decipher if a title holder is a champion.

Some people like to stick to tracing back to the lineal title to recognize a true champion, for the heavyweights that is the John L. Sullivan title.

Personally, the lineal champion is not one of my main criteria when identifying champions.

First, who has that kind of time to trace back? With all the belts now, you could watch a 12-round title fight in the time it will take the average person to trace all these weight classes back to the lineal champions.

Second, this method is not iron clad. I say this because if you follow this criterion then Gennady Golovkin is not recognized as the top middleweight champion today.

Unless you are completely biased, you have to recognize GGG as a true champion, and anyone who beats him should also be recognized as such. Nobody in their right mind would not consider GGG a world champion just because his belt does not trace back to Nonpareil Dempsey, would they?

Oh wait, Ring Magazine does.

I am sure the Ring’s decision to call Canelo Alvarez the middleweight champion instead of GGG has everything to do with lineage and nothing to do with Ring Magazine being owned by Golden Boy. Wink wink.

For a long time, HBO and ESPN recognized the Ring Magazine champions as the true World Champions. Many other fans and pundits do as well. This is something I find odd because the Ring has had many hiccups over the years.

They refused to acknowledge the cruiserweight title for years and called Michael Spinks the heavyweight champion when Mike Tyson was considered the undisputed heavyweight champion by just about everyone else.

For me, I like to see an active champion, who defends his title and provides other fighters with the opportunity to take their belt when that fighter works their way up.

I point to my favorite fighter of all-time Marvelous Marvin Hagler, for my reasoning. Despite fighting his way to the number one ranking, Champions Rodrigo Valdez and Hugo Corro refused to give Hagler a title shot.

Both guys won the lineal title but refused to defend it against their biggest threat, the guy who deserved it the most. If we were still willing to call these guys champions, then what right do we have to be choosy?

Let us look closer at Valdez. He failed to defeat Middleweight King Carlos Monzon on two occasions and did not capture the lineal middleweight title until Monzon retired in 1977; Valdez was the WBC champion from 1974, but he was not the lineal champion and very few people recognized him as champion over Monzon.

Upon being recognized as the World Champion, Valdez refused to fight Hagler and lost in his first title defense against Hugo Corro. He deserved to be recognized as a champion more than GGG or Mike Tyson, or any champion today?

Before you go crazy, this example is not intended to disparage Rodrigo Valdez, he was a fine pugilist, but to show how linking to the lineal champion is not the end all, be all, method.

Another interesting thing about Valdez is that he defeated Bennie Briscoe after Monzon relinquished his belts, Valdez and Briscoe fought for the WBC and WBA titles in one fight. It is not done this way anymore; if a champion relinquishes more than one title, the sanctioning bodies have different vacated title fights, we saw this in the late 80’s when the middleweight titles were split up and we are seeing it today with the 140-pound belts that Terrence Crawford relinquished.

It makes more business sense to do it this way, but it makes a mess out of tracing the lineal champion. As a result of Valdez and Corro fighting for both belts, the middle title had a long run of having an undisputed champion.

Back to Hagler. Despite being ducked by Valdez and Corro Hagler eventually became the undisputed middleweight king. As a champion, Hagler for the most part made sure he gave the number one contenders a title shot. We saw the good and bad in this.

Hagler’s first defense was against top contender Fulgencio Obelmejias. Fully Obel, as the phonetically challenged referred to him, proved tough but outmatched. That fight took place in January of 1981, by November 1982 Hagler had to fight Obel again because he was ranked number one by the WBA and considered a mandatory; a status he did little to earn.

It was clear that the WBA handed Obel a favor. Hagler kept his mouth shut and went all the way to Italy to beat Obel even easier the second time around. Not a good use of power from the sanctioning body.