Who's the lineal HW champion?

At the moment no one is, however a lineal champion will emerge if Joshua and Wilder fight.

 

This.

 

Well, you could say that Fury is Linear Champion emeritus, if you fetishized about such things, but I believe AJ has the strongest claim to being the actual linear champ.

When Fury 'disintegrated' just prior to his scheduled rematch with Wlad, that left Wlad and AJ in the two top spots.

#1 and #2 fought and AJ emerged victorious, thus creating a new line.

So AJ is the man.

 

Fury

 

Lewis. Until all the belts are on the line and a new lineage is created.

 

The man who beat the man is lineal champion until someone beats him in the ring & becomes the man.

Klitschko was the man until Fury beat him.

That makes Fury the man until someone beats him in the ring.

Don't confuse the lineal championship with The Ring championship.

Joshua & Wilder are currently no more than alphabet champions.

That's why it's a big play for Wilder to land a fight with Fury (if he, in fact, does). Claiming lineage will elevate his championship reign to something more than a minor footnote in the history of the heavyweight division.

Rumsfeld did a video on heavyweight championship lineage a while back.

Watch it & learn something.

 

Going by the long time standard it's still Fury. But given the long layoff/how he treated himself during the time and the PED scandal involving him and Hughie it's hard to take the claim seriously... But if we're going by the long standard... Fury for whatever it's worth.

 

Technically, it's Fury. But regardless of any official or unofficial rules about lineage, I don't think you can indulge yourself with a three year binge, complete with two retirements and come back still claiming to be the guy once the division has moved on.

Therefore I'll borrow from others and say nobody is the lineal champion, that is until Joshua and Wilder fight as they are quite clearly the #1 and 2 contenders respectively. I do like the idea from @cuchulain that Fury is the Emeritus Lineal Champion though. That I can work with.

This however, I do not agree with. Joshua (before beating Klitschko) had no win that cemented himself as a top two HW. All he had on his resume were Whyte, Breazeale and Martin, and at the time Whyte and Breazeale weren't the top ten HWs they've cemented themselves as today. In Fury's absence I believe Wlad would have been reinstated as #1, but you could make an argument that any one of Wilder, Joshua, Ortiz or Povetkin was the #2. Therefore I don't believe Joshua beating him started a new lineage, it merely put him at the top of the pile. It's only until very recently (Wilder beating Ortiz) that we've had a universally agreed upon top two.

 

Lineal explained

I agree with Rummy. Unless you want a bit of a history lesson on how the old'ens dealt with title exchanges there's no reason to click my thread, but if you are authentically interested in lineal and want to know as much as you can Rummy's vid deals with lineal from a modern perspective whereas my thread deals with lineal from a pre-sullivan historical perspective.


Since we're speaking on lineal. How do you guys feel about champions by election? If Tyson Fury tomorrow said " Guys I just ain't got it no more, Hugie is the new lineal champion" would anyone respect it? Do you see Marvin Hart as champion post Jeffries?

 

The Ring used to also be the lineal, now it doesn't. It's Fury. But that does raise the question of what are the rules for this? Considering this is a weird case with Fury's absence

 

Tyson Fury, though I wish it wasn't

 

I actually agree with that, I retract Fury ever been lineal since Wlad never were