You have to be gullible to be a sports fan and invest your emotional energy into something ultimately irrelevant - like the outcome of a sports contest. I include myself in this having been a die hard football fan for years, now it just seems all a bit ridiculous
Individual sports in particular as they are competing solely for themselves. Teams are associated with a place and therefore has an affinity as watered down and soulless as that is these days.
Yeah perhaps. I feel it’s more divisive than anything else. Hating your neighbours in football for instance, very un biblical
I'm not sure if anyone does think it's superior? It's still an achievement though, whether one is better or not it depends, Alis path to 3 time heavyweight champ is superior to AJs (probably), as it'll be superior to some "undefeated champs" It depends on how someone's undefeated or how someone's become a 3 time champ
As great as it is to be undefeated the whole worship some people put in to it means the 0 is protected and there is too much of that these days. Stops the big fights from being made or people fighting easy opposition.
Being unbeaten is obviously far more impressive. However being a multi time world champion is a massive feat. It means that you’ve lost and more than likely overcame that loss to redeem your belts or you’ve went away and worked hard and got them back.
It will most likely be a vacant title against Hrgovic. People would give him more credit if he had beaten Wilder, Fury or pre-Fury Klitschko but he's picked his belts up on soft touches so far and that looks set to continue. I respect Joshua as a boxer, he has had a great career and is better than people on here give him credit for but he should have avoided Usyk like the plague and gone after Fury or Wilder, he could have won both those fights.
Hopefully, cutting right through this total mess. Usyk was Joshua’s mandatory, so he wasn’t brave fighting the former cruiserweight, or he would have been stripped. With every home advantage possible, he was comprehensively beaten, reeling on the ropes at the final bell. As it was a mandatory, no return necessary. The governing body. that’s a laugh should have kicked that one out. However, Ed, had done his job as Ant’s representative and it went ahead. Delay after delay, Usyk repeated the dose. Without that unnecessary rematch this whole mess would have been so much clearer and we would have “THE” HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! Dubois and Nganou, would never have been given a thought, or am I being delusional?
Today, with multiple belts and divisions it can be largely meaningless. In the one belt, fewer division era, it had some kudos. To regain your world title you had to defeat the guy who took the belt of you, showing that you had learned from your loss, or you had to beat the guy who dethroned your conqueror. Ali beating Foreman is probably the most well known example of this, and Ali got a lot of credit for it for beating Foreman who obliterated Frazier.
Even better is beating genuine World Heavyweight Champions to win the belts like Fury. Winning the belts from Charles Martin and Andy Ruiz is like somebody letting one go in the elevator with an innocent face looking around to see if anyone noticed.
Sums up my thoughts. Re capturing a world title after a loss shows character, having an unbeaten record shows that they probably didn't always take the biggest challenges
Wladimir Klitschko and Wilder were both long reigning World Champions with the latter knocking out nearly all he faced. Wilder also travelled away to Moscow to face Pedvetkin in his own backyard plus Hearn admitted recently that Joshua ducked him. Ruiz simply a fat Burger munching mess who exposed British Level Joshua.