Just Me, Or Did The EBU Heavyweight Title Used To Be More Prestigious?

It was a major belt until 1946 then it was the most prestigious regional belt before NABF and USBA hit the scene.

Brits can fight for the European belt and for most of their shared history the EBU belt was more prestigious then the Commonwealth/BBBC titles. European champs did better in unifiers and the title shots on average then the British fighters on average. And any British fighter who was an exception to this rule probably had the IBU or EBU belt anyway. In recent years the British titles might be more prestigious then the EBU for the very first time.

Theres also decolonization. In the beginning the "European title" was actually the regional belt for much of Africa and Asia as well. The only time the IBU got the LHW lineage it was a guy from Senegal who won it.

 

Not only in the Heavyweight, but in general - European title used to mean much more. You had very good fighters defend it for many years and it meant something.
Pretty sure that proliferation of titles is what killed it. If there's one World Champion, being best in one of the larger regions is a great achievement. With 4 and more titles, it's much easier to get the "world" title so anything below is overlooked.
I think if You had World Cup every year in Football/Soccer, noone would care about Copa America or European Championships either.

Were those not guys who were just born in Africa or Asia, but were based out of Europe?

 

Well when you've got 4 championship belts it devalues everything

 

Yeah, I think the world belts that are not top world belts maybe diluted the pool a bit.

 

It was very important. It provided fighters for Americans to make easy paychecks against.

 

I think even as recently as 15ish years ago...somebody like Brian Magee was seen as more of a semi-legitimized challenger (of Lucian Bute for the world title) having scaled the Commonwealth to Euro ladder, than your average random pops-up-from-seemingly-nowhere present day contender who is mysteriously awarded world ranking for padding up a record at home versus tomato cans.

 

I think there’s just so many titles in general these days that most of them don’t mean much anymore.

 

Before the second world war, if you held that title, you were a very significant fighter.

 

Excluding Eddie Machen, of course!

 

I think part of it too is that European (and other non-USA) fighters are way more dominant vis a vis American fighters than they used to be. So there are more European fighters who reasonably aspire to hold a world title than formerly, especially since there are so many so-called world title "belts" (I hate the use of that word in this context!) floating around. This probably has the effect of making the European titles less important in the eyes of the European fight fans. Their realistic expectations for their heroes are greater than they were years ago.

 

Back then Africa and Asia didn't have a seperate regional pipeline.

But actually I misrememberd it was Carpentier who took the lineage from Levinsky then Siki beat him.

 

As somebody who was a former European lightweight champion. I do agree that the EBU belt should be valued more.

 

Who are You champ? Or should I not ask? )