Quote Originally Posted by THE PHILOSOPHER View Post
You're going back into fantasy "what ifs"

I'm purely dealing in fact. "Robberies," bad decisions and terrible match-ups are common place in boxing. However, the "man who beat the man" is the closest you can ever get to having a TRUE champion.

Hold up... even your fantasy linage leads back to Lewis. I've forgot what point you was making? ()
Factually Sven Otke is undefeated! We all know briggs wasn't THE MAN! Bowe was LL's no.2! Briggs....LOL. Of course the lineage is up for debate.

I don't think you understand what lineage is?

When there was ONE champion you had to beat him to become champion. "The man who beat the man." It's the purest form of establishing a king per division. If the lineage gets broken (a champion retires), it gets restarted when the independently recognised no.1 and 2 meet.

The lineage is not up for debate. What can be up for debate is whether or not the lineal champion is actually the "best" fighter in the division. But that just complicates matters even further.

Bowe was better than Briggs. I agree. However, Briggs was the lineal champion when Lewis beat him. And that win cemented Lewis position in history going back a million years. The heavyweight lineage is very easy to trace.

Sven Ottke was never a lineal champion. Being undefeated is irrelevant. Calzaghe became lineal champion when he defeated Jeff Lacy (they were independently rated 1 and 2). Like Ottke, his "world" title defenses prior to this are basically meaningless.