10 Most Accomplished of My Lifetime

[marbleheadmaui]

However silly the alphabets are, they generally help in pointing out the best fighters in a particular divison, and certainly seem to play a role in helping to define a new linage.

Would this linage had been considered had there been no title unification on the line? Would it have been considered had Hill not already beaten the current WBC champion Tiozzo?

Seems to me the WBA, IBF and WBC titles strongly influenced the creation of a new MAN.

I think your initial assertion is simply wrong. Here is a partial list of current alphabet strapholders who aren't remotely among the best fighters in there division.

Guillermo Jones, Beibut Shumenov, Dimitri Sartison, Gennady Golovkin, Hassan, Njikam, Austin Trout,
Saul Alvarez, Cornelius Bundrage, Soulyman M'bye and I'm still at 147 and above.

When Manny beat MAB, there was no alphabet strap on the line. Just MAB's win over Hamed over vasquez over Rojas and all the way back to Eusabio Pedroza.

Let me try it this way. What do the alphabet belts do positively that the Ring rankings don't? I'd argue nothing. Yet they cost the sport in a big way by diluting what Champion means. I really believe this is one thing that has driven the casual fan away. When I was growing up in the horse and buggy days, even a casual fan could tell you who the middleweight and welterweight champions were. Even the fans who only cared about the biggest fights knew they were getting the goods when a fight was fairly labelled "for the undisputed lightweight championship of the world." Serious fight fans (like me) could name the champ division by division. Today? NOBODY could remember the 100 names of guys who have belts and casual fans have no way to know, outside of the true event fights, which ones are real championship fights and which are fiction.