My timeline of the premiere SMW in the world.

Ok I've sat down this morning (whilst watching Leeds getting dicked by Burnley) and looked over my timeline.

There were some glaring errors that I've fixed and Is tick with what I've got now.

1) Eubank became a smw when he knocked out watson in 91, at this point he was, imo, the best smw in the world. Tiozzo is the gapstop between hearns leaving and eubank joining.

2) my ranking of reid was ill founded, it seems obvious to me that once jones left the division the natural successor was franky liles, I'm content with my choice there.

3) the calzaghe era I've tweaked a fair bit. Joe was the top dog from 02-04 mainly by defaulot because the other champs were getting gift decsiions whilst joe was plodding along beating his mandatories as well as a fantastic victory over mitchell. He then went inactive but noone was good enough to stake a better claim until 2004 when Kessler stepped up his competition with the same results. Joe had a **** 2004 and it's about this time he was seen as a paper champ really so I'm happy promoting kessler. I don't care what anyone says, 2005 was the year of Lacy, Io remember the hype and seeing his record he knocked out williams, reid and pemberton. The only other victory of note in that year was kessler's over mundine and i don't think that points win is as good as the 3 stoppages scored by Lacy, the hype of the time as well means I'm happy with my placing. Of course in 06 and 07 joe beat them both to stake his claim as undisputed champ.

4) Calzaghe left the division in 2007, during the next year or so nothing happened in the division other than bute picking up his claim against berrio before being smacked around by andrade raising serious question marks. the wbc belt remained vacant and the wbo belt became meaningless again. Kessler was on the back of his competitive loss to calzaghe and he dominated the unbeaten sartison which to me is better than anything else during the period between joe leaving and froch-pascal. I'm totally happy that when Froch beat Pascal he became the top dog for a few factors, bute getting whupped in that terrible final round where he should have been stopped and kessler became extremely inactive against no marks. Froch is the only standout candidate here and his clear victory over Pascal plus his stoppage over Taylor are enough for me to make him top dog. His close loss to Dirrell was almost immediately followed by Ward's victory over Kessler so that's when the "title" changes hands.




I am happy to debate any of the above points because I'm fairly certain over my timeline now. Bute has a decent claim once Joe leaves but I don't think his win over berrio is as good as mikel's over sartison.

 

That's exactly what a lot of us believed at the time. However I think there's more substance than usually recognised as nobody had a better 2005 than him.

 

Basically what i'm doing is trying to give a hypotheitcal lineage of the man who I think is most deserving of the title "world champion" so in essence I'm backdating every division with an "lufcrazy" champion. There's only ever 1 at one time and it's never vacant.

The man I deem to be at the top differes from case to case and it usually requires a fair bit of research which is why over the last couple of month i've only listed from HW down to LMW. There's no magic formula I refer to, I just try to judge case by case who has the best claim.

In the modern era it usually works like this; I'll look at the 4 belt holders and decide which of them 4 is the most worthy, is 1 staying inactive? is 1 beating better opposition, is 1 coasting because of how he's generally perceived, has 1 beaten the other's already, does one excel where the other's struggle? I just combine the factors.

Prior to the alphabet era, the champion usually coincides with the perceived champion unless the perceived champion is fighting subpar opposition compared to a standout challenger (e.g. liston overtakes patterson'c claim in 1960 and Langfrod overtakes Johnson's claim in 1911)

I'm not expecting anything I do to be definitive or even considered. I'm genuinely researching each era because this is of great interest to me. I'm then just posting my results to see if anyone has a better insight than I do.

I'm not really a believer of you have to beat a champ to take his title. I think the journey only just begins once a man hits the top spot; they have to work hard to keep their position. By the same stretch I don't believe in stripping due to not fighting bull**** mandatories.

Just one man giving his opinion.

what would your timeline look like?

 

Brilliant lists.

As I said mine is like a combination of factors.

I've basically created a hypothetical sanctioning body that represents my opinions and listed the holder of this organisations belt in every division since it's inception.

In a way like when the ibf formed and they handed their belts to the guy they thought was the best in every division. I've just done a hypothetical version of that plus backdated.

This isn't the only division i've done i've gone from hw and worked my way down. The next one i'm working on is welterweights!