Briggs should've never won lineal HW title and challenged Lewis' belt

Agreed,

and for the those who believe that a "linear" champ only looses his title in the ring, then the title must have surely died with Gene Tunney.

 

Either way, Briggs might have been lineal but he was never accepted as the true HW champion of the world.

That became clear only when Lewis beat Holy.

 

Untrue concerning Tunnys retirement. Once a champion retires the next champion is crowned when the two top hwts fight. Sharkey and Schmeling were considered the best. They fought and Schmeling won. Schmeling is then the new true champion.

 

Agreed, Lewis was just another title holder until he beat Evander.

 

:good

 

A man who honorably retires is no less the champion than one who hangs around milking the sport for safe and easy paydays while ducking the top contenders. If a man is stripped of his title for failure to do his duty while another is picking up the torch then that other man is the champ... When Jeffries entered the ring Johnson, it was Johnson who was the champ.. When Ali fought Frazier, it was Frazier who was the champ.. When Spinks fought Tyson, it was Tyson who was announced as the champ and so on and so forth. George Foreman was no longer heavyweight champion of the world when he fought Briggs.

 

Exactly. It's fair for a champ to occasionally defend his title against lesser fighters, but you can't just sit on the title indefinitely.

Foreman should have defended against a top contender by 1996. He didn't. After KOing Moorer, he spent 3 years fighting journeymen.

 

You are making up your own rules. You cannot be stripped of the lineal championship. When Johnson fought Jeffries he had long ago retired so yes Johnson was the true champion. Ali had retired in 1970 to make way for Frazier. Frazier then won the true championship when he beat the No 2 contender Ellis. When Spinks fought Tyson Spinks was the true champion since he beat TWICE the true champion Holmes. Foreman was the true champion until he lost that title to Briggs. Period.

 

Maybe in your eyes.

But in the eyes of the media, the boxing public and the promoters who ran the card, Briggs was never regarded as the true champion.

He held the lineage yes but until Lewis unified with Holy there was no true champion.

 

The bottom line is linear champ. does not always mean true champ. Briggs is a great example of this. It had no value in his case. It's like saying Queen Elizabeth has control of the British Govt. Her role is ceremonial, much like Briggs claim as heavyweight champion.

 

The only championship that has any value is the true historic championship since it is the championship that can be traced to the very beginnings of the sport. how is say a WBO championship legit when they have their own champion, their own challengers and they act on their own stripping who they want to strip making their championship that much less relevant and valuable. Being the worlds boxing champion is the greatest prize in all of sport. It's value is terribly lessened if you believe it can be stripped and handed over to another.

 

The truely knowledgeable realize that stripping away the sports history from the title makes the title worthless. It's then easy to be a champion. Today many champions would only be contenders in years past and top ten challengers today would be unheard of.

 

Ok Perry who is the LHW champion today, the true champion in your eyes?