WBA 160 situation

I'd say there's a lot more crap than good.

 

i disagree.

 

You're telling me :-(

Every so often I here that the WBA are doing **** loads of mandatory fights and are clearing up their mess and I get hopeful that they have seen the light and are now aware that they should only have 1 champ at one weight. They then promptly announce a fleet of new interim title fights involving **** fights in divisions that do not need an interim champion.

 

In the long run, hopefully the Ring will start to have a proper influence on what fights get made and will enforce mandatories because we'd genuinely have the best fighting the best then. But that's a long way off happening if at all.

The bottom line is it's a combination of greed and market exploitation. As boxing fans, we of course only want one champion in each weight and we want them defending it against top class contenders as often as possible. But as long boxers and promoters are able to continue to milk the general public with pointless fights and mismatches, that ain't gonna happen.

For the sanctioning bodies, all of them, it's just printing money. Every 'world title' fight they stamp their name on, every 'final eliminator', all them fights are printing money. That's why every 5 years or so you get some other new alphabet combination sanctioning a fight and making money off it. But the promoters and boxers are happy because it sells fights.

An example. In reality, Ricky Burns is little more than a British champion right now (and even that ain't really proved). But him and Frank Warren can currently make far, far more money by using one of these bodies names to call themselves world champion and the fans and general public will lap it up. In this case it's the WBO. Roman Martinez did the exact same in Puerto Rico after he took the title from Nicky Cook who took it from Alex Arthur who was also doing the same thing. It's just boxing politics. But we can't really hate on any of these guys for doing so, it's a tough sport and hell money makes the world go round.

All of them, including the IBF, got no interest in running boxing as a sport. It's all the money game.

The other major problem out there is that even if, even if we had only one governing body in boxing. People would still dispute certain things and certain fights wouldn't get made, eventually leading to the titles being broken into fractions again.

As a boxing fan, I hate it. But there really is nothing that can realistically ever be done about it.

 

I disagree with you about Burns. Martinez was a genuine world level opponent. Burns is at the same level as the other champs at 130lbs

The problem is not just the sanctioning bodies though. Zbik being turned down as an opponent for Martinez is not a good situation. Zbik is top 10 with every single independent rankings but HBO reject him in favour of a guy outside the top 20. Same thing happend with Berto and Aydin.

Martinez is the champion at middleweight. everyone agrees. but if he goes a whole year or 3 defences without fighting a single top 10 middleweight thats only a bad thing.

 

What you say is very true. People ***** and say Aydin and Zbik aren't good enough opponents but whilst they may not be elite they are far more proven then both Hernandez and Lee.

For me HBO are utter garbage, for example why on earth are they still going with 1 show TV slots, a fight like Bradley-Alexander needs a co-main event. And all this is proven in the massive decline in viewing figures that HBO are getting for Boxing is quite scary. The heads at HBO need to be giving the sack to Greenburg and some of their Boxing heads.

 

The win over Martinez was great. But who exactly is Roman Martinez and how is he world class? He was getting comfortably outboxed by Nicky Cook before admittedly stopping him impressively. All his other wins have been well matched fights in Puerto Rico. It's nothing against Burns because you're right he is now probably on a par with the rest of the top guys at SFW now.

You're right as well though about it not being the only problem though. In my view, it was wrong of HBO to turn down Zbik as an opponent and to choose Andy Lee instead but again it comes down to what makes them money. Only it's a little more legitimate and fair if it's the tv broadcaster making this decision rather than which promoter pays which governing body money for an eliminator or mandatory position.

Edit: And I agree with Royalt about HBO messing things up. The TV channels should be the ones standing up to these poor mismatch fights and ordering deserved matchups instead. I don't know what HBO are currently thinking but they don't seem to have any long term strategy at the moment as was shown when they quickly got rid of Khan and Maidana after their FOTY contender finished.

 

HBO pay more money than anywhere else in boxing apart few cases. So they are in a position to dictate the sport. So why do they use

Why not get behind the ring title. Show fights for all the Ring Champions. Insist on these fighters defending against guys ranked in the top 10 by the ring. If two fighters in the top 10 fight each other, back the fight and show it.

This will send a message to everyone in world boxing. If you want to earn big money and be on HBO, you need to fight the best on your division. If you want all your fights on HBO you need to become lineal champion.

All of this is coming from me who thinks the Ring is bull****. I guarantee on the HBO broadcast of Martinez vs Lee they will slag of the WBC for striping him and that will be a joke.

 

Yeah you're right Rob. HBO should really be getting behind the Ring magazine title properly. At times they do use it pretty well but it should be a consistent thing and not just when it suits them. Again it comes down to money and Lee makes more money in the short term than Zbik does, even though he's a worse and less deserving opponent.

 

This division is wide open,apart from Martinez the rest of the belt holders seem to be above average at best and holding on to their belts by any means possible by only fighting below average boxers,then mandatory fighters and high ranked boxers are plodding along the year with only journeymen to fight as the belt holders go into hiding!

 

to be fair, i cant really think of any other domestic operators who woulda done as good a job. Foster Jr? doubt it.

out of interest, what is the WBO/WBA's ruling on interim champ? if you are a regul;ar WBA champ, is that the equivalent to being an interim champ, or what?