Fury became the lineal champ after beating Wlad Klitschko. Then he had almost 3 years out of the ring. And then went over 3 years before fighting an opponent inside the top 10. Now, I know the Lineal title isnt actually tangibly real. It does not exist like a belt. But that said, it still does carry weight, in some circles it is more respected than any of the actual world titles. So my question is why wasnt Fury stripped of his lineal title considering his inactivity? Wouldn't it make sense to have the lineal title vacant until somebody established dominance? From my perspective the lineal HW title is vacant. And a Fury Usyk match would be about the only way to determine HW lineal supremacy. In any case a fight between those 2 would be for the lineal title anyways since Fury is the lineal champ. But I'm thinking a man who was 3 years out of the ring would have to reestablish being lineal.
There's 3 scenarios here 1) Fury was always lineal 2) Fury was stripped and his rematch with Wilder formed a new lineage 3) Ruiz Jr somehow ranked above Wilder for the rematch in which case Fury would need to face Usyk next.
Why should a fighter who spent over 3 years without fighting a top 10 fighter still he recognized as the man? I can see the argument for the Wilder rematch as being for the vacant title, but cant see Fury always being lineal after the inactivity.
You cant be stripped of a lineal title, even in retirement, thats not how it works. Someone else could earn the lineal title later on and become the new lineal champ but the old lineal champ keeps the title until that happens I hate to quote Wikipedia because it contains a lot of incorrect nonsense but in this case its reasonable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineal_championship
The lineal title is just the knowledge of knowing who really beat the man who beat the man, and is only a verbal title and acknowledgment by fans and boxing people. No matter what happened if no one beat him afterwards titles or not he still holds that recognition until someone beats him.
Ofc, I see your point of view & would Fury not have come back we would have seen a break in the lineage probably to be determined by a Wilder v AJ fight some time between 2019 and now Rummy made a great yt vid about it
An inactive lineal champion remains champion until someone else establishes himself as a new champion, starting a new line of succession.
*****This^^^^^ Fury took the **** a little but unless he reired then it was still his. After that a new line is formed as whoever is the consencous. We just have a period when it was up in the air as we didn't know when Fury was coming back. but the line was never broken and no one had cleared the division in that time frame anyway.
I thought the usual logic was that Fury-Wilder restarted the lineage. This does point out how the lineal title isn't perfect though. It's extremely common for someone to grab a good win then coast against poor/no opposition for years and years.
I get it. You can't strip somebody of something that doesnt exist. I'm not trying to talk semantics smartass.