PACQUIAO, WLADIMIR, & MAYWEATHER AREN'T WORLD CHAMPS!

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALPHABET BELTS AND WORLD TITLES!

Landover, MD – With seventeen weight divisions, multiple sanctioning bodies, and the growing number of interim and ‘super’ championship situations, it’s no wonder so many fans throw their hands up at the thought of following Boxing too closely. Since I began writing about this great sport, I have made sure to acknowledge that some fighters transcend the insanity of the sanctioning body mess as true world champions while others are merely titlists. The word to describe them, re-popularized among the hard core fans in the last decade, is lineal i.e. the man who beat the man.

FOREMAN’S IMPACT ON LINEAL MOVEMENT!



The rebirth of the lineal movement for most fans was the World Heavyweight title reign of George Foreman in the mid-1990’s. In the year following his win against Michael Moorer in 1994, Foreman would see himself stripped of the alphabet titles he owned (WBA and IBF) for not fighting who they demanded he fight (Bruce Seldon-Tony Tucker and Axel Schultz-Frans Botha were the stellar fights used to fill those belts). Foreman continued on, billing himself correctly as the lineal champion of the world. Right around the same time, the internet began to emerge as a strong voice in Boxing with educated fans beginning a drumbeat back to lineal recognition across the board. The Cyber Boxing Zone (CBZ) became the premier source for tracking the baseline of Boxing’s most important histories…it’s line of champions.

RING BACK IN THE ACT IN 2000!

That had always been the purview of Ring Magazine, at least until the late 1980’s when they stopped singling out lineage. After a lengthy vacation, they got back into the act of tracking real world champions in 2000 when, with an editorial assist from ESPN, they began crowning world champions again. It has been a source of controversy since with some writers and pundits taking sides and others treating it with indifference. I have been, in my opinion, on the fence. Certainly critical, I have also often stated that Ring’s title belt belongs around the waist of the real world champion as it was from 1922 and throughout most of the sports modern history; heck it was even the belt in the Rocky movies. My beef has been with their selection process and failure to recognize the sum of Boxing history but I don’t fail to recognize that the heart is in the right place. It’s about having one champion for one world in each division. For those who know what they are looking at, the debate boils down to CBZ vs. Ring to find the body that does the best job of setting the record straight.

RING VERSUS CBZ…WHO IS THE REAL BIBLE OF BOXING?

Below is a chart of who is recognized by each body as well as which side I agree with. The man I feel emerges as the real world champion in each division is in bold.

Division:
Ring
CBZ
Author Agrees with…

Heavyweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both

Cruiserweight
O’Neill Bell
O’Neill Bell
Both

Light-Heavyweight
Bernard Hopkins
Zsolt Erdei
CBZ

Super Middleweight
Joe Calzaghe
Joe Calzaghe
Both

Middleweight
Jermain Taylor
Jermain Taylor
Both

Junior Middleweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both

Welterweight
Carlos Baldomir
Carlos Baldomir
Both

Junior Welterweight
Ricky Hatton
Ricky Hatton
Both

Lightweight
Diego Corrales
Vacant
Ring

Junior Lightweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both

Featherweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both

Junior Featherweight
Israel Vasquez
Vacant
Ring

Bantamweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both

Junior Bantamweight
Vacant
Masamori Tokuyama
CBZ

Flyweight
Vacant
Pongsaklek Wonjongkam
CBZ

Junior Flyweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both

Strawweight
Vacant
Vacant
Both




FIVE DIVSIONS IN DISPUTE!



For those who insist on arguing that Boxing is ‘too confusing,’ that argument is turned on its ear above. There are only five divisions in Boxing with any real dispute about who the world champion truly is and there is no real champ in the other classes. Let’s break them down:

Light Heavyweight – Hopkins vs. Erdei: The longest running debate among lineal geeks like myself is at 175 lbs. Ring argued when initiating their policy in 2000 that tracing old ratings and fights would be too ‘confusing’ so they would essentially just start over. I always felt the argument was hogwash and revolved around this very class. In 2000, Roy Jones held all the major sanctioning body titles. In 1996, Virgil Hill laid blanket claim to the then-vacant real world title of the class by defeating Henry Maske and, if Ring’s recognition of champs had never experienced a break, even under the rules they have today, Hill would have been crowned champ by them (Hill and Maske were 1-2 even in the Ring when they faced off) and was recognized by the CBZ. He lost his title to Dariusz Michalzewski in 1997 and, in 2000, would Ring have had the ally in ESPN or the outgrowth of respect they got from fans if they had stood staunch with history instead of with the perceived ‘pound-for-pound’ god Jones? We’ll never know. Erdei descends from the line Hill started and is currently ranked second by Ring; Hopkins descends from Jones who got ALL of his belts through the sort of political machinations (two were stripped from Dariusz for piddling reasons) that Ring claims to counter. Erdei is the champ.

Lightweight – Diego Corrales: CBZ makes a strong argument against Corrales, that being that Diego has only won two fights at 135 and needs to greater distance himself from the pack. I favor Ring here because I think they were the right fights. Currently, the titlists at 135 lbs. are Corrales (WBC), Acelino Freitas (WBO), Julio Diaz (IBF) and Juan Diaz (WBA). On the road to Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo, Freitas and Julio were defeated by each of those men respectively. Juan Diaz has yet to beat an elite lightweight. This is really a case of CBZ having a higher standard than Ring, which isn’t all bad because CBZ will never list a Vitali Klitschko (formerly at heavyweight) or Paulie Ayala (formerly at 122 lbs.) without merit as Ring did. I suspect that within one-two fights both sides will be in agreement here.

Junior Featherweight – Israel Vasquez: Vasquez faced off with Oscar Larios within the last year in a unification bout and won. Considering how shallow 122 lbs. is right now, that seemed to me to be enough. CBZ again seems to be waiting to see if Vasquez can distance himself from the pack a bit more. Unless Vasquez moves up, any lineal claim recognized by CBZ will have to run through him which says to me that he already is the man.

Junior Flyweight – Masamori Tokuyama: This division is a case where Ring has not had a chance to crown a champ because of their insistence in a historical do-over. If they had continued to recognize lineal champions without a break, Tokuyama would wear their belt now. His title descends directly from the 1984 unification bout between Jiro Watanabe and Payao Pooltarat back when there were only two titlists and that line has never been broken.

Flyweight – Pongsaklek Wonjongkam: He is ranked number one at Ring; without a lapse in title giving, he’d be their champ right now. Wonjongkam just broke the 112 lb. title defense record of Miguel Canto with his fifteenth defense, which is ironic because his lineal claim begins and continues unbroken with Canto.

BOXING NOT THAT CONFUSING AFTER ALL!

There you have it. When someone asks you ‘who are the champs anyways’ you can answer that nine divisions are vacant and rattle off the other eight. It might suck to say that over half of the weight divisions in Boxing don’t have a champ, but it beats explaining the difference between a ‘super’ champ or ‘interim’ titlist. I think it’s only a matter of time until Ring and CBZ are in lock step at every division but I think it is important to recognize that it was CBZ who picked up the ball and continues to maintain the highest standards for the history of the game. CBZ may never get editorial support from major media or hand out belts, but they did the heavy lifting to make sure the fans can find the real history of the game without a decade long break or a do-over. That said, it is a Ring title belt, not a sanctioning mob belt, that you see in old photos of Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis. I’m glad they’re back because those belts are an important part of the history CBZ protects.



Cliff Rold

www.ringtalk.com