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The Alphabet Boys Strike Back!
by Rubio MHS, Moderator @ IronLife.com
In the past few weeks, Acelino Freitas and Kostya Tszyu have won new titles in boxing, but they didn’t win them in the ring; they won them in the boardrooms of corrupt sanctioning bodies such as the WBO and the WBA. What is an "Emeritus" champion? What are "super" world champions? Are they good for boxing? What’s with all these titles in the first place?
There has been a proliferation of "World" titles over the past 30 years. In the old days, there was one champion and  that was it. Sometimes a title fell vacant and different athletic commissions and sanctioning bodies such as the New York State Athletic Commission and the NBA (the precursor to the WBA) recognized different champions. They sometimes lasted for up to 10 years, but eventually they were resolved. In the 1970s, a schism began in boxing that exists to this day; the WBA would recognize one champion in a division and the WBC would recognize another champion. Some divisions were split and others were unified. The World Heavyweight Championship was unified throughout the 70s until the WBC refused to recognize Leon Spinks as the World Champion because he defended his title against Muhammad Ali instead of their number one contender, Ken Norton. They gave the belt to Norton, who became the only man in the history of boxing to be World Heavyweight Champion without winning a world championship fight.
Things got even worse when the IBF got into the picture. The IBF grew out of the USBA, which was created in 1976 to recognize United States Champions. Tired of merely making the United States Championships more convoluted, the USBA changed its name to the IBF and started recognizing World Champions, starting with Larry Holmes, who they paid a hefty sum to carry their title. Soon, every weight division had up to three championships running around, and as time went on, there were more and more weight divisions. The cruiserweight division was created in the late 70s and now there are 17 weight divisions in boxing, with 51 major titles; 68 if you count the WBO.
The newest threat to boxing is the concept of a "super" world champion. The WBO started this trend when they recognized Naseem Hamed as the WBO Super World Featherweight Champion in April of 1998, when he tknocked out recently defrocked WBA World Featherweight Champion, Wilfredo Vazquez, in his 10th defense of his WBO World Featherweight Championship. Their logic was that if a fighter makes 10 defenses of his title, he’s special and should be treated differently. Instead of facing mandatory contenders every year, a WBO Super World Champion has 2 or 3 years to defend his title against the #1 contender, sometimes more. Naseem Hamed went almost 3 years without fighting his mandatory contender, Juan Manuel Marquez. Marquez finally got sick of waiting for Hamed and when he was given a shot at then WBA featherweight titlist, Freddie Norwood, he took it. He had a terrible night and lost to the game featherweight, but he later won the IBF version of the "World Championship" at 126 from current WBO World Featherweight Champion, Manuel Medina.
Basically, Hamed defended his title against whoever he wanted to. In his 6 year reign as WBO World/Super World Featherweight Champion, he simply ignored his mandatory contenders. Boxing fans didn't have much to complain about,  as he beat the WBA, WBC and IBF World Featherweight Champions and generally faced every tough opponent out there, knocking almost all of them out. The dark specter of the WBO Super World Championship lies more in Dariusz Michalczewski's corner. In many people’s eyes, Michalczewski has a stronger claim on the legitimate World Light Heavyweight Championship than Roy Jones did based on his unification of the WBO, WBA and IBF World Light Heavyweight Championships. But who has he fought in the past 4 years? No one! He's become the Khaosai Galaxy of the 175 pounders, fighting nobodies, but still winning gift decisions. Later, Joe Calzaghe became the WBO Super World Super Middleweight Champion (and if his Welsh last name wasn’t hard enough to pronounce!) after his 10th defense of the title and recently Acelino Freitas "won" the WBO Super World Jr. Lightweight Champion following his 10th title defense.
The WBA got into the Super World Championship business in 2000. On paper, it looked like a good idea. If a WBA titlist holds the WBO, WBC or IBF title in that division, he is given 18 months to fight his mandatory contender rather than 12 months and if he holds two or three of the rival sanctioning bodies’ titles, he’s given 21 months. In the heavyweight division, the champion gets 21 and 24 months to defend his title, respectively. It makes sense. If a champion has to fight 3 mandatory contenders a year, he won’t be able to make the fights that he and the boxing public want. Look what happened to Roy Jones in the late 90s. He could never make a big super fight because he was too busy fighting mandatory contenders.
How the WBA’s super titlists differ from the WBO’s super titlists is that they recognize a "world" champion in the same weight division. Kostya Tszyu is the WBA Super World Jr. Welterweight Champion and Vivian Harris is the WBA World Jr.  Welterweight Champion. Sven Ottke is the WBA Super World Super Middleweight Champion and one of the few men he actually knocked out, Anthony Mundine, is the WBA World Super Middleweight Champion. The WBA currently recognizes six such titlists, and with them, six more pseudo-titlists, most of whom even the most fervent boxing fan hasn’t heard of.
Now, the WBC is offering boxing fans multiple champions in various divisions. Their "Champion Emeritus" status was first bestowed upon Erik Morales, in order to give him time to face Marco Antonio Barerra instead of defending his title against their mandatory contender. Like a WBA Super World Champion, a WBC Champion Emeritus has more time to defend against his mandatory contender, and like the WBA, the WBC has created a secondary title in a blatant attempt to gain more sanctioning fees. Lucky for boxing fans, Morales left the 126 pound division before the WBC could confuse us with a second champion at featherweight. At the WBC convention in Moscow, they decided to recognize Kostya Tszyu as the WBC Champion Emeritus at jr. welterweight. He’ll still carry his WBC World belt with him to his next fight, but the WBC is making the winner of the upcoming fight between Arturo Gatti and an obscure European fighter named Gianluca Branco the WBC World Jr. Welterweight Champion.
All three super titles give the champions more leniency in defending their titles. No one wants a situation like Roy Jones defending his titles against Ricky Frazier, Glen Kelley and Richard Hall year after year, he a slave to the corrupt sanctioning bodies that pretend to give legitimacy to his title reign. In the wake of fighters like Marco Antonio Barerra spurning the major sanctioning bodies, champions have become a commodity to be pampered. But the real money in these titles is getting twice the sanctioning fees from each division. Popular yet less than talented fighters like Arturo Gatti are money makers to start with, but put a paper title around their waist and people start to view them as real champions, when they aren’t. Boxing aficionados will know who the real champions are at each weight class, but the general public won’t, and that’s not worth it.
* Article by Rubio MHS, Moderator @ IronLife.com
* Back to Issue #4 Frontpage
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