british 2 weight world champs how many have there been ?

Bob Fitzsimmons. THE man at 3 weights.

 

I think we are agreeing. I agree it has better champions

I don't see how it would affect the Ring title if when you award it to a fighter its made clear they have to have a top 10 ranked guy once a year to continue with the title.

Can Marquez really call himself the number 1 at Lightweight when his only fight at the weight for 16 months was agaisnt a guy coming of 2 losses at Light Welterweight who he already beat???

Gaz I have heard you lineage arguement before. I respect its importance but I think its far more important a title means the best fight the best. The lineal champion is not always the number 1 fighter in a division and the ring title doesn't always follow lineage. Calzaghe was ring champ but not lineal.

 

true sorry. not great on pre war.

 

By this rationale, Jimmy Wilde never won a belt either.

 

Then we'll have to disagree. For over 100 years boxing titles have been won and lost in the ring wherever possible and thats how I believe it should stay and wherever realisitically possible the Ring seem to have the same idea.

I like the idea of one world title per weight and having it won and lost in the ring. As nice as having the best fighting the best every year sounds its never really consistantly happened in boxing with that 1 year timeframe.

Fighters have always had slow years or soft defences and it isn't worth stripping genuine titles and installing paper champs because of that.

The Calzaghe/ Hopkins/ Erdei/ Jones situation at Light Heavy was a mess caused by modern boxing, multiple belts and the champs being unwilling to fight each other. The Ring made a call on the situation (that I didn't agree with) and moved forward ending up with Hopkins as champ. Thats why in my first post I didn't say Calzaghe was the lineal champ.

Bar the odd personal disagreement over the Light Heavy title and the vacant Heavy title I still MUCH prefer the Rings way of operating over any of the Alphabet Boys.

 

What if the fighter doesn't do that? The Ring has to strip, loses linearality of its title and becomes no better than the other belts.

Thats what I've been saying, they don't enforce mandatories because it would inevitably lead to them having to strip champions. When the Ring belt was re-introduced one of the main ideas behind it was that, wherever possible, titles should be won an lost in the ring.

Like I say, its not perfect (the JMM case is a good one), but its a damn better than any of the other options around at the moment IMHO.

 

ted lewis won a few i think! Just a few tho :hey

 

The problem I have with the RING belt is that it places far too much emphasis on American boxers and people fighting regularly on Showtime/HBO. Let's look in more detail at the Calzaghe argument where it works for him quite well.

It was assumed that Roy Jones was the main man at 175 even though we had that ridiculous situation with DM holding the lineal title in Germany. Now details are skechy but it appears that Roy Jones was installed as the Ring Mag champion sometime in 2001 when there was almost as much debate about whether DM or RJJ was the better as FMJ and Pacman have now. Now as soon as RJJ went to HW to fight Ruiz, Antonio Tarver was automatically installed as Ring champ at 175. He then lost to Hopkins (via Glen Johnson) and that is how Calzaghe won the Ring belt.

Also, people assume that Calzaghe won the SMW ring belt against Kessler, wrong. Calzaghe became Ring champ because Jeff Lacy was Ring mag Number 1 rated boxer and Calzaghe was number 2 when they fought.

Now in hindsight Lacy has or was never anywhere near the level of Calzaghe but the journalists who contribute to Ring are biased towards boxers that are seen regularly on US TV which, for the most part, tends to be Americans. Kessler was the real threat to Calzaghe, not Lacy but again, he was fairly unknown in the US due to the lack of TV exposure.

I'm not sure how many of DM's fights were shown in the States but I'd hedge my bets that there weren't many of them. RJJ and DM were the dominant forces of LHW for many years and should have fought each other to have an established number 1 in the division. And that's exactly where the Ring belt fails because they never fought but they dished the belt out.

If Calzaghe had never fought Kessler and moved up to face Hopkins after Lacy then in my mind, he would have not one but two of these undeserved bogus belts.

If, in theory, we have two brothers dominating one division but will never fight each other, what happens? Oh wait, we have the Klitschkos.

It's a nice idea, but needs a lot more work.

 

I agree with allot of what your saying, but I think you have seen to many bad mandatories and its made your opinion on the negative. forcing someone to fight a decent level of opponent can only be a good thing.

 

Also, the fact that The Ring is now owned by DLH opens up a whole can of worms when tight calls are made involving Goldenboy fighters. If the Ring belt is to be taken seriously, it needs to be a completely independent body that's not run with cash.

 

No, thats missing the point. The level of mandatories doesn't even enter into my thinking, I've never thrown Lockett, Jennings or any other of the poor mandatories at you in this argument have I?

Its not about the quality of the mandatory, its about what has to happen if a champion doesn't face that mandatory ie. he gets stripped. The Ring won't enforce mandatories because they believe titles should be won and lost in the ring wherever possible, not on some pen pushers desk.

 

Lets be honest though, despite all the conspiracy theories over the rankings when DLH took over, its never really been an issue....

(And Lacy had a lot of people fooled, not just The Ring and The Yanks. Pre-Calzaghe he'd have got in most peoples top 2-3 at 168 even on the Brit forum. Judging after the event is easy but the ranking compilers don't have that luxury))

 

But he only had a lot of people fooled because he'd been built up and hyped like nothing else. He'd fought 20 times before facing Calzaghe and his biggest win was a washed up Robin Reid and got outboxed in periods by the mighty Syd Vanderpool.

 

I agree POW, he was completly overated looking back, but its not as if The Ring was in the minority or out of step with the general thinking in boxing at the time when it had Lacy that high?

 

Calzaghe won the only belt that matters at 175. I love how you dimiss the legit divisional championship belt, but have no problem with the WBO....