Thoughts on the phrase "world champion"

This is a fight game. 1 can always fight 2. Every blue moon there might be brothers competing and ever bluer moon they might both be ranked 1 and 2. To date this hasn't exclusively happened so that they only occupied them together.

K bros are an example. Vitali could have fought byrd after sanders. Wlad could have fought rahman or maskaev when vitali was retired.

I wouldn't say my logic is flawed but it's quite strict i'll admit. Thankfuly for you i'm not a governing body so have no real say.

I just don't see how one man being ranked as top contender for a few years can get away with never fighting the number 2. With wlad there are mitigating factors which could be explained perhaps by wlad knowing vitali would return eventually and so leaving a belt open for him. But in 130 years of heavyweight history that's happened just once.

 

The lineal way gets derided by some yet that's how boxing was for a long time; you became the best by beating the best and I don't mean subjective best as in "he looks good on film" I mean proven best as in "he's just defeated the world champion" lineage is fair and honest.

People might argue forest is better than mayorga or hearns is better than barkley, but these arguments mean nothing in the ring because both got shot down when it counted.

Even when there were two belts it was akin to having two top rated contenders who would unify to determine the man when any lineage got broken. But now with 5 belts knocking about and soon to be a 6th in the ibo the word champ doesn't mean what it used to. It no longer means the top dog in a division.

You could say the wbo rankings are just as valid as the ring but the truth is we know these are dictated by sanctioning fees and aren't really credible anymore.

Yes in lineage in a belt can be taken into deep freeze but it's better than the alternate. Following 1 v 3 gives more champs I know but it doesn't mean as much.