With declining standards, are Lee Savold and Ernest Terrell now legit champions?

No

 

If you're going to recognize (at least) the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO now and the NYSAC in Joe Frazier's time, I think you have to recognize Terrell's and Savold's titles.

If you have chosen to ignore the sanctioning bodies and their strange decisions and have tried to recognize just one world champ, lineal style, then no, Terrell and Savold weren't legitimate champs.

I choose the latter.

 

Savold never was considered as a legit champion. Terrell is perfectly legit though

 

They were title claimants. They never had the best title claim, but they claimed it none the less.

They went into the ring where a fight was promoted as being a championship fight.

In my mind their title is as valid as the not universally accepted claims from the turn of the century, as valid as the coloured championship, as valid as the duration championship, as valid as the claims of those belt holders who clearly are not number 1 in the division today such as Anthony Joshua.

Some believe these guys deserve no credit, some believe they deserve full.

For me it's somewhere in the middle.

 

Terrell at least beat top rated contenders to earn his alpahabet title.
Savold beat a second rater in Woodcock and nobody, outside a few stupid Brits, pretended it meant jack ****.The two best heavyweights at that time were clearly Charles and Walcott.

 

This is a good way of looking at it.

 

Similar to the WBO claiming Damiani as the heavyweight champ of the world while Tyson held the rest of the belts.. Crazy.

 

When the announcer introduced Lennox Lewis as the universally recognized undisputed heavyweight champion of the world before he fought Botha, I thought to myself "that's not true about him being universally recognized" because at the time I recognized one of my neighbors as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world

 

Lee Savold's claim is about on a par with Bruce Seldon's.

Ernie Terrell in 1965 was actually a better fighter than Savold in 1950 .... but Terrell's legitimacy is even weaker than Savold's.

 

Neither were champions and neither were people like Wilder. But I will say you’re a hypocrite if you don’t consider the latter two champions but people like wilder are.

 

No,because Terrell beat a swathe of top heavyweights and was thre standout challenger to Ali and Woodcock never did , his best scalps Savold by dsq and Oma by ko were both fakes.

 

If you do then you have Kilrain, Slavin, Maher,Sharkey, CC Smith, Grant, Hadley, Godfrey, Jackson, Childs, Armstrong, Martin, Jeannette, McVea, Langford, Wills,Tate, Godfrey, Gains, Walker, Bobo, Murray, Bivins,...where do you stop?

 

To tell you the truth, Terrell's claim was so much more solid than what Savold had. Savold didn't even have EBU sanctioning behind him. This 'title' was created by the British Boxing Board (actually I think it was created by promoter Jack Solomon to create a Brit heavyweight champ in the wake of the Louis retirement). Solomon plucked Savold from the wasteland to serve as fodder for Woodcock (Savold was 35 and hadn't fought in a year and a half. I think for all intents and purposes he had retired), only for Savold to massacre the Brit. This 'title' was so tenuous that when Savold lost to Joe Louis the following year, the BBB of C would not recognize Joe, despite the bout flying under the banner of the BBB of C. They simply threw their lot with Ezzard Charles. So much for sticking with BBB of C recognition.

 

Why should we accept the bar being lowered?