Video - Fury's rightful claim to the lineage

Except deciding how someone becomes lineal is arbitrary. Arguing that pretty much everyone thought he was the main man is still arbitrary. He never beat a reigning WBC champ, so there was always another man out there calling himself the champ. He also never beat his brother. There are obvious reasons for them not fighting, but still, it meant the top two heavyweights post-Lewis never met and that too muddies the waters.

Even saying that Lewis cannot be the lineal champ because he's been out too long is arbitrary. How long is too long? Jeffries was out of the ring almost six years, but in his time he was still regarded by some as the real champ and beating him gave Johnson more legitimacy. Same deal with Ali/Holmes.

Were past champions ever credited as the "lineal" champion? I don't recall ever seeing a contemporary article which boosts Tunney or Marciano in this way. It seems to me it's something that's only come to prominence in recent decades for use as a marketing gimmick and yes it is generally used by fighters who don't currently have an ABC belt to tout around.

Even before the ABC era not all world champions were universally recognised. There was still the NBA, NYSAC, EBU, BBBC etc who sometimes set up their own champions. Sam Langford briefly held a version of the world title recognised in France, for instance, and Lee Savold held the Euro version of the world title after Louis' retirement.

 

I have indeed watched it, and I thank you for another well researched analysis.

Yes there is definitely historical precedent for a lineal champion announcing their retirement, spending a couple of years inactive, and still being able to claim the lineage upon their return.

There are also counter examples, and they have tended to be more recent.

Here is my concern.

You are effectively saying that if a champion retires, the two best men can be matched for his vacant title, and that creates a legitimate new lineage.

That new lineage can then be overturned retrospectively, if the former champion comes back within say five years.

This strikes me as being a very problematic model, both from a standpoint of implementing it at the time, and assessing it retrospectively.

Here is my problem with this.

To take the example of Ezzard Charles, he is either champion because he beat Walcott for the vacant title, or because he beat the former lineal champion in Louis, but it can't be a combination of the two.

It is true that we have not seen the top two contenders face off since Fury retired, but we could theoretically have done, and we would need a policy to cover that scenario.

If Joshua had fought Wilder before Fury's comeback say, we would be in a difficult position right now.

Personally I will sleep a lot more comfortably with the issue, once Fury has faced off against Joshua.

 

In my eyes it isn't important what the other heavyweights did while Fury was away, because the lineage was either vacant or it wasn't.

If it became vacant when he retired, then it became vacant irrespective of any affirmative action by other fighters.

If it did not become vacant when he retired, then it wouldn't matter whether the #1 and #2 faced off, because there was nothing for them to fight over.

 

Where Joshua and Klitschko number 1 and 2 when they fought? I feel like I should know this, but if that's the case then surely Joshua has a claim.

 

I don't think that they were.

Joshua was #5 at the end of 2016, and he did not fight in 2017, until he met Klitschko in April of that year.

 

Cheers for,clearing that up, to be fair he'd barely beaten anyone of,note minus Whyte

 

But history shows that heavyweight champions have announced retirements and been inactive for long periods, then decided to continue or come back and were recognized as champions.
Corbett, Ali, even Dempsey I think. I believe Jess Willard told people he was retired before facing Dempsey too.
Retirement announcements are cheap in boxing.

Claiming the championship isn't such a formal process as your post seems to imply.
Hey, even in a very formal job, if a person at the top resigned from his position, no one filled the void, then he decided to return, he might not be asked to go through all that formal stuff to come back to where he left off.
It's common sense.

 

Past champions didn't need to be credited with "lineal" because it was taken for granted that championships had a lineage passed along by challengers beating champions and being beaten in turn by new challengers.

Then the ABC organizations became too powerful, a bunch of crooks, and completed distorted the common sense approach that boxing had lived by.

So, now we're at the point where people think the lineal principle is "just a marketing gimmick" .... hey, I can't argue with that, I can see that angle for sure, but looking at it like that then "world champion" was always a marketing gimmick anyway, all the way back to year dot. Or back to Heenan-Sayers at least. It was always an outrageous claim to get people to the fights.
The ABC organizations entire power rests of them making lots of fighters and fights "marketable" too, with their belts and tags that are easily plastered onto televised fights.
Boxing is an exercise in marketing gimmicks.

 

Maybe I'm off here, but aren't Ali's and Fury's cases awfully different? Ali refusing military service, while Fury was using recreational and performance-enhancing drugs?

 

The PED issue was long before the Wlad fight. It's also ignoring his very severe depression making him medically unfit to fight.

 

I just find it absurd that a champ can announce his retirement, retire, give up his titles, then a few years later, when other fighters have legitimately won those titles, he can return, with no meaningful recent wins and no matter what his state of health, mind, fitness etc, and automatically be considered the Man in the division, solely because a few years before he beat a man the bods had pencilled in as the "lineal" champion...

So yes I see "lineal champion" as just another world title and a marketing gimmick. Foreman and Spinks only took to promoting themselves as such so they could continue having title bouts after they'd been stripped of their ABC belts (in both cases for not meeting their mandatories). It doesn't really confer any more legitimacy. Did anyone really believe Shannon Briggs was the true heavyweight champion? Ultimately all lineages start with someone arbitrarily deciding that the winner of fight X was the lineal champ.

Take Fury. It's not like his lineage stretches back through decades of champs and challengers. It only goes back to about 2009, when Wlad beat Chagaev or whoever it was, and someone decided that was enough to make him the lineal champ.

 

Sense!

 

Actually, Fury was retiring and un-retiring on a monthly basis, continuing to claim the lineal championship throughout most of that time.
RING magazine actually recognized him as champion at the beginning of this year (2018) and so many people on this forum like to use RING magazine rankings as a bench mark.

Like I said before, Dempsey, Ali etc. did their own retirements, and Dempsey was actually off for longer than Fury was.

For some reason, Fury is treated differently.

Hey, if you didn't consider Wladimir Klitschko the real heavyweight champion in 2015 that's that's a good reason to disregard Fury.

 

The Ring is not the final word either, it's just the opinion of a magazine which also happens to be owned by a major promoter. So they continued to recognise as champ a guy who hadn't had a fight for three years, had well documented personal issues that were keeping him out of the ring, and whose titles had all been won by other fighters. And why after three years would they suddenly make their title vacant, when the Man and lineal champ had just returned to the ring?!

Ali's retirements usually lasted weeks, if not shorter, and he always made sure he returned for a fight before his title could be won by someone else. The whole thing was still in its infancy in Dempsey's day. I doubt he'd get away with three years of inactivity now and still be able to come back and call himself champ.

I don't see real champ and lineal champ as synonymous.

 

I think that politics has a lot to do with it, even with lineal time claims.

In Dempsey's case nobody wanted him gone.

He was a highly lucrative champion, for the key people who made decisions in the sport, and a bout to appoint his successor, would have had to include Harry Wills.

Nobody wanted to go there.

Fury came to be seen as a destabilizing factor, the longer he remained inactive and got fatter, and a lot of people would have liked to see him replaced with the highly lucrative and media friendly Anthony Joshua.

Nobody really expected him to make a meaningful comeback, including myself.