Shannon Briggs (who was not very good) would have beaten Charles Martin I genuinely believe Martin is the worst heavyweight champion in history
I agree. While Martin is certainly one of, possibly the worst champions ever, there are some similar duds along the way. Briggs stands out as an anomaly from the chaotic 90's (for the record, I still have him easily beating Martin). Thankfully whatever "lineal" means to most people is on a good run over the last quarter century with Lennox, Vlad, Fury, Usyk.
He was getting outboxed by a 40 year old ray Austin before he managed to stop him. You could say he punched harder and took a better shot than Martin, but he’s probably not more skilled.
He's literally the worst. It's comical AJ won a championship off him. It's boxing corruption and clownishness at its finest. He only fought for the belt because Duva pulled strings and got Fury stripped a few weeks after he won the belts. He only won because Glazkov did his knee. The idea Glazkov was 'losing' at the time is absurd as it was just the early stages and nothing had really happened. The idea he is better than Stiverne is also ridiculous. Stiverne beat up Arreola badly in two fights, KO'd him proper in the second. Arreola was a contender back then. AJ fans trying to justify this is so laughable. Just admit it's the worst champion and AJ was gifted a belt. You can then tell us about beating old Wlad and old Povetkin and Covid Pulev and Whyte and Takam and Wallin and Ruiz in a rematch after being TKO'd. The resume speaks for itself. But just admit the first belt was a joke.
Worst since Michael Bentt but that's with the caveat that back then the WBO belt wasn't really seen as a legit world title, would be like someone now being the WBF or IBO champion.
Wilder is up there, one of the only HW champions in history who had no idea what he was doing on the back foot and had no jab at all. Dreadful.
Wilder actually was fighting well on the backfoot against Stiverne, Molina and Duhaupas. Had a nice jab too.
The WBO wasn't recognized until 2004, so Bentt should not be included. Liakhovich should get a mention here as he was WBO champ in 2006.
He was a genuine negative anomaly, that's for sure. It'll be hard to ever get another champion as bad as he was. Thank god!
Briggs vs. Martin prime for prime h2h, yeah, probably going with Briggs via stoppage. IDK, though, even in his prime he got a gift over ancient Foreman. If he could avoid taking a big shot for twelve rounds I'm not sure Martin couldn't outbox him. (as did not just Vitali and Lennox but lesser entitities like Botha, Fields, McCline, Ibragimov, and Liakhovich before his literal last-minute brain fart) Thing is though, with the lineal championship you expect a higher standard of quality as it's more rarefied and prestigious air. The bar for plain old alphabet titlists at HW is pretty damn low in comparison. Briggs is a more blatantly egregious black mark on the lineal HW championship annals than Martin is on the plain old HW titlist annals.