WBA a rock in the sanctioning bodies mess....

Guillermo Jones hasn´t defended his WBA cruiserweight belt in two years meanwhile the WBA now recognizes three welterweight champions.

The un-unified WBA super champion Shane Mosley, who was beaten down by Floyd Mayweather in his last fight.

Vyacheslav Senchenko, the WBA regular champion from the Ukraine with a 30-0 record, who is in the boxrec database, so we assume he´s a real person.

And finally the new WBA interim regular champion Souleymane M´Baye, who received a title shot in his first fight at 147 after he struggled to two controversial wins over british clubfighters at 140 in the last two years. Even sadder it appears he legitimately beat some undefeated Canadian can.

WBA a standout, even among scum they rise to the top. :bears::bears:

 

Fucking hell....:shit::shit::shit::shit:

 

It used to be the WBO who got this abuse. The WBA is the new WBO.

 

Further proof that boxing is in great shape. There's so many great fighters at 147 that the WBA has to recognize 3 champs. :bears:

 

Yet mikE will argue that Pac wasn't a 'champ' at feather because he didn't pick up one of these illustrious titles.:shit:

HBO, Showtime & Ring Magazine should get their heads together and create one champion for each division and a ranking system below him. And then just flat out REFUSE to ever mention any of these other titles or acknowledge their existence again. Boom. Sort this whole shit out.

 

HBO in control of the rankings?

Arreola-Minto would've been a title eliminator.

 

Henry Armstrong held three championships simultaneously, but even he didn't capture three WBA titles. Let's see who is the first to accomplish this formidable challenge

 

(1) You can win something that wasn't on the line, unless you are Rocchigiani. Pacquiao beat a guy with a claim to a belt, but he didn't fight for the belt so he didn't win it. It's called a non-title fight because a title is not on the line. Titles are not subjective.

(2) Your wish will never happen, should never happen, would be a disaster if it did happen, and cannot work. It is naive to think it could work.

Interesting that you believe your trinity of HBO, Showtime, and Ring Magazine...all entities with shareholders and blatantly obvious motives contrary to providing legitimate champs and legitimate rankings...would do a better job than what we have now.

Just because something can be criticized, it doesn't follow that it can be improved. Personally, I believe some things could be improved about our current system, but what you propose is forseeably a huge step in the wrong direction.

So, let this by my callout to everyone of you morons who think such a system...or anything similar...can work. Provide the details. I will take the time to respond and point out the ignorance and flaws behind such a system. And if I cannot, then great, I'll jump on the bandwagon and admit I was wrong. I'm not worried.

 

Again......Barrera was champion. Recently linear champion, recognised champion, Ring belt champion. Pac beat Barrera. He became featherweight champion. Undisputed featherweight champion, to all intents and purposes.

You say Ring Mag, Showtime & HBO have shareholders etc. AS IF THESE FUCKING TOILET BODIES ARE IMPARTIAL AGENCIES? Are you aff your fecking nut? By having a committee of representatives from 3 competing bodies with competing interests you can mitigate this partiality to the extent that it's possible to do so. In the compromise you most likely, most often end up with some aggregate of these bodies interests which is to have a generally credible, marketable sport. Especially since Ring would effectively have an arbitrative vote in instances when HBO signed & Showtime signed fighters are competing for top ratings.

It's screamingly imperfect, but its sure as all fuck an improvement on the current set up. The 2 best fighters in the entire sport are at a weight class where only one of them is a 'champ', but in competition with 5 other equally legitimate 'champs'. In your mind anyway. Holding one of these belts means NOTHING. It bears no connection to the term 'champion'.

 

What's going to be in place to keep HBO and SHO from favoring the fighters they already show on their air, and the promoters who supply the fights?

Or is that the point..for HBO and/or SHO to complete their power grabs and basically just become boxing's 'UFC' and 'Strikeforce' already?

 

The point is their competing interests would be balanced in the ratings by the votes of the other and by Ring magazine.

Look, this is just something I pulled straight out my ass, Im not saying its fool proof it's just something I'm throwing out there. But this crap has reached tipping point and something along these lines; something which returns us to one universally recognized champion per division has to be implemented. And it will have to be recognized by showtime, HBO & Ring magazine for it to work, so it will take some mutual involvement and investment from them in some form.

 

I just went over to Ring Magazine's website for the first time in months...just realzied Nonito Donaire is the fourth best p4p fighter in the world.

Surely not done just to sell magazine subscriptions to Pacquiao fans.

 

Doesn't seem that outlandish to me. After Pac & Floyd you have a big pile of nothing, take your pick. Im sure if we went on the wbc, wba, ibf or wbo ratings you'd find 100 placements that put that in the shade. The Ring, HBO & Showtime all have to keep up some pretence of credibility in the info they disribute because people can just stop paying for them. And if you create a rating system out of their aggregate votes you have all 3 keeping each others biases in check on top of that. The 4 belts have nothing keeping them in check, nothing. They've already become a universal laughing stock and there's been very little consequence, they keep rolling along and Mike keeps saying you have to be recognized by them to be a champion.

 

They do?

How many times was Chris Arreola put on their network with a straight face?

Are Lampley and Kellerman and Steward anything more than salesmen?

And has SHO become much better than a secondary HBO?

And the equalizer is going to be Golden Boy Promotions' Ring Magazine?

 

Yup, HBO has it's biases. Showtime has it's biases, Ring has it's biases. But each is less pronounced/offensive than any of the sanctioning bodies (since they're at least accountable to their audience while the bodies are accountable to nobody), and when you aggregate/average them you mitigate them a bit more. It's imperfect, but it's 1000x better than what we have now.

I mean seriously Im sure if somebody smarter than me puts a little thought in they can come up with something better....but it's gonna have to have the 3 major disseminators of info to boxing fans onside for it to work. So it's gonna be as imperfect as they are, whatever happpens. Boxings an imperfect sport, there's no objective structure you can impose on it.....the old 1 champ system was imperfect.....anythings better than this shit, though.

 

If i was rich i'd buy out all of the sanctioning bodies. Keep one and shut the others down.

 

Wonder how much it'd cost. Whip around?

 

or when they promoted Sanders has the number 3 hw after he upsetted Wlad ( while doing nothing in years and losing is only meaningfull fight before that in Rahman ) so they could make it a ''championship'' fight. The RIng Chmapionship policy is a joke

 

Ring magazine is a joke and has been a joke for years.

But saying that Vitali vs Sanders was not a good pairing for the Ring Belt is grasping at straws.

 

What is the cut of the fighters purse that the sanctioning bodies get?

 

No idea, but i don't think you'd have to be Bill Gates to buy them out. The question would be if somene could and prevent those sleeze from starting up again under a different name in another country.

 

The thing is, their power is only in their recognition. Thats why it has to be the major media outlets that take charge of this - if they don't have publicity/perceived legitimacy they have nothing. They become nothing more than the IBC or some pish.

 

True, but there is some history with the sanctioning bodies. Many boxers want a chance to fight for one of those "championship" titles as so many great fighters from the past have held the belts.

I think media outlets are ignoring them to a degree, problem is they are only doing it when it suits them. You'll remember that HBO basically said Mayweather-Mosley was a non-title fight but that fact didn't mean anything. (because it didn't)

On the other hand they love to advertise championship fights as much as the promoters do.

You rarely hear HBO ignoring the title on the line in a matchup when they are the ones broadcasting the fight.

 

True, but they'd sure as hell start ignoring the other titles if they had a part share in the new title. And surely they would recognise that it would help the prestige of ALL fights if there was only one title.

The most important thing, IMO is that fights become intelligibly meaningful to casual fans.....You wanna make it as easy as possible for them to feel like they know what they're taking about so they wanna invest time in it. Right now its a minefield. 'Champion' means fuck all.....and that totally devalues everything below it. Nobody wants to watch a 'battle of top contenders' if they don't even know if the WBA champion is a legit top 10 guy.:notallthere: ::

 

Which WBA champion? Do you mean the interim regular eastern latino champion?

 

Edit - yeah ::

 

(1) People use 'champion' to mean 'best.' In boxing, that isn't the correct definition. In boxing, a champion is a boxer who holds a title. Pacquiao didn't hold a title. He may have a claim to being the lineal champion...a very good claim, but if you are going to count lineal champions as legitimate champions then you should count them all. Shannon Briggs, Dariusz, etc. Typically, the Pacq crowd doesn't use the same logic when it comes to fighters they don't like as much. Do you?

(2) The sanctioning bodies exist in order to create champions, keep their belts relevant, get the best fighters to fight for their belts, make money, and provide a structure to ensure that deserving fighters get shots, among other things. They don't always achieve this and when you have multiple objectives, you are going to have situations that cannot meet all objectives at the same time. But they have a huge incentive to make it work. And the big 4 have been quite successful at it.

(3) Ranking fighters is not easy. And it is far more likely that a talented individual can do a better job of it than a consensus of multiple people. Why should the IBF agree to compromise their rankings with the WBC? They are competitors.

(4) Not in this case.

(5) The idea that The Ring is more credible than the sanctioning bodies is a farce. The idea that they should have an arbitrative vote in rankings is ridiculous. They have had the support of ESPN2 and HBO for about a decade and they are still irrelevant. Why? Plenty of reasons, but I'll just name one: because they are not suited for the job.

(6) Imo, this shows where you haven't come close to thinking it through. What about fighters who are not ever going to get signed by HBO and Showtime? They are not about the best. They are about making money. The best heavyweight just fought last weekend. And HBO and Showtime wanted nothing to do with him.

(7) Absolutely right.

(8) Absolutely wrong.

(9) This is only an opinion. Whether I agree with it or not, it doesn't matter. We will never know who the best fighters are at any give time because there are way too many possibilities and they can't all fight each other. You shouldn't advocate change solely to fix one issue. Also, refer to (1), 'champion' and 'best' don't mean the same thing and I don't care if the best is a champion or not. I do care that the best get title shots if they want them, though.

(10) I don't consider champions to be equal. They often have better claims to being the 'real' champion than their counterparts. But if you have a legit belt that you won or even were awarded legitimately, then you are a legit champion.

(11) You need to define 'nothing' because I doubt there has been a title holder in history who would agree with you. Or an upper level fighter who has tried, but failed to win a belt.

 

(1) Their competing interests are generally in line, though. The Ring's are not.

(2) We have found one point we completely agree on in this thread. ::

(3) It's not much different than it was 20 years ago excep their are 4 main belts instead of three. In fact, I'd say it is far better since unification bouts occur so much more frequently.

(4) No it doesn't. We would all prefer if it occurred, but it doesn't have to happen. As I pointed out, it's better now than it used to be, though.

(5) The entities you name already recognize the belts. Constantly. They criticize them primarily because it suits their interests, but it's no different than people bitching about their bosses, their jobs, the government, the legal system, etc. People like to bitch and the sanctioning bodies are a pretty easy target. Often because they should be, but not always.

(6) This conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. And I completely disagree.

 

(1) Don't you see the problem with this? Power tends to corrupt. The problem with only one title is that it creates a situation where a shitload of power is in relatively few hands. And it will be a disaster.

(2) HBO and Showtime and ESPN2 already cater to casual fans. They just don't do it as I wish they did; they try to cater to the lowest common denominator. I would educate about the sanctioning bodies rather than criticize them blindly. But it's so much easier to criticize even if it is bullshit criticism.

(3) Cater to the ignorant and the end result will suck.

(4) Only if you don't understand what is going on which is why I would prefer to educate rather than criticize.

(5) You've made up an imaginary situation. Do the tv ratings back up anything about this point? Does reality? There are not too many ratings or weight classes where the WBA's champ will not be in the top 10. (I mean their real champ, not the bs interim stuff)

 

There's so much I disagree with here, so much which misrepresents what i said in the first place & so much which affronts basic common sense it would take all night to go through this. Our original contention over whether Barrera was a champ when Pac fought him stands as a good fulcrum of our differing views on all this shit & we probably should have just left it at that because we're irreconcilable on this. You obviously think these bodies have some legitimacy beyond the life blood of their universal recognition. I think all the term 'champion' has ever meant is to denote the universally recognized guy to beat. These bodies only exist as convenient but arbitrary batons denoting who that is at a given time. And that system works when the fans, media & fighters agree to it's relevance. But the sanctioning bodies have become such a farce, they've abused that presumed legitimacy so much that it no longer really exists. Not when guys really prove themselves THE man in a division. When people stop caring it's just a silly plastic belt.

That's what it is at 147 now and thats what it was in 2003 at feather