Remember when the WBA had Fres William Oquendo rated for a ridiculously long time, for some reason?

Did...you think he wasn't, anymore? Because he still is. As of today, he is their number fifteen ranked contender.

• Fast Fres is 'coming off' a MD loss to Ruslan Chagaev in July of 2014.
• Fast Fres did not compete in 2015
• Fast Fres did not compete in 2016
  
• Fast Fres did not compete in 2017
  
• Fast Fres did not compete in 2018
  
• Fast Fres did not compete in 2019
  
• Fast Fres has nothing lined up, with almost two months in the books for 2020.
  
• Fast Fres turns 47 years old in six weeks.

...again,

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What dirt does this middle-aged boricua ex-pugilist have on Gilberto Mendoza?


Quick timeline recap of how we got here:

1. Fast Fres filed several complaints in Federal Court about dishonest practices on the part of Russian promoters in the Chagaev fight, and was granted an immediate rematch.
2. Chagaev spent a year in talks with Luis Ortiz for a fight that never took place, then fought Pianeta, then was supposed to rematch Oquendo, but Oquendo got sick and pulled out. Chagaev then got stopped by Lucas Browne, and subsequently retired (still owing Oquendo money - and a rematch - per a legal order)
3. Fast Fres said "screw it, I'll hang around and fight whoever WBA officials deem appropriate in light of Chagaev's retirement; it was never about the rematch with him specifically; I just want another crack the belt..."
4. Three years went by before the WBA finally arranged to have Oquendo face Manuel Charr.
5. Fast Fres remained Charr's mandatory throughout 2018 and 2019, and the fight was scheduled several times but hasn't happened yet.
6. Charr himself hasn't fought since 2017, and tested positive for anabolic steroids the following year, but is STILL the WBA Regular heavyweight champion.
7. Tangentially to all of this, Trevor Bryan, the interim WBA heavyweight champion, has been sidelined since 2018. Don King has been advocating for a unification between Charr and Bryan for five years.
8. Bryan has actually called out Oqendo, but Fast Fres only has eyes for the regular belt. Not the super championship (held by Anthony Joshua) - nor Bryan's interim. It has gotta be Charr's regular title. That one is juuuuuuuuuuuuust right.

But still. Even with the 'reasons why' spelled out from A to Z, one can't look at that and make heads nor tails of HOW THE HELL THE WBA HAVE ALLOWED THIS FARCE TO EXTEND INTO 2020, WITH A MAN PUSHING FIFTY COMING OFF A LOSS HALF A DOZEN YEARS AGO TO STILL BE RANKED TOP FIFTEEN.

The court order a) was kind of silly to begin with, b) pertained to Chagaev, and should if anything have been nullified upon his retirement, and c) was a zillion years ago now and d) he isn't even keeping active, which if we're talking about the granular details of legality is part and parcel of the requirements to maintain one's ranking within any major sanctioning org!

People shit on boxing, and with stuff like this, I honestly just can't defend it.

 

There was talk as recently as December (2019), per Doug Fischer, of Bryan vs. Charr actually taking place soon, with the winner obligated to immediately meet Oquendo next, with the winner of that fight ordered to turn around and face Shannon Briggs within 60 days.

 

^ Shannon Briggs who is seventeen months older than even Oquendo, and who last fought in May of 2016 and has been absent from the WBA rankings for at least 3½ years... (and hadn't beaten a top 15 ranked contender since before his one-sided UD loss to Vitali Klitscko a decade ago)

...that Shannon Briggs.

 

Okay, fine, but the collateral damage of this whole situation is that he remains, like a dingleberry that simply won't fall off the hairs of your inner ass crack, in the official, published HW rankings. To a casual, glancing at those rankings, and then doing some very basic surface level investigation of "who this Oquendo guy is", without said casual necessarily being privy to all the context of the WBA's saturating the market with too many belts and us 'real' fans knowing to not bother minding any but the "Super", this makes the whole sport of boxing look absolutely ridiculous. Like, as ridiculous as its detractors (and the proponents of, say, MMA's superiority) claim it to be. Which is bad, IMO.

 

Yes. I learned that today. (per court records in Illinois)

 

I just don't see how the original finding in his favor (against Chagaev and his promoters, and peripherally the WBA) could possibly be still enforceable. There has to be a statute of limitations or something, after now more than a half-decade?