Best Governing Body?

The WBA were alright until they started this super-regular-interim belt rubbish but let us never forget the WBA were the ones who started the alphabet soup era by splitting their belt from the lineage back in the day when they withdrew recognition from Ali as champion

 

https://www.espn.com/blog/dan-rafae...he-wba-rankings-are-even-worse-than-i-thought

 

That, the Oquendo debacle and having a million belts per division have really dragged their name through the mud over the course of the last decade.

 

What's the worst terminal illness?

 

Despite how utterly terribly WBC are We Be Appalling still rule as the worst org .

Just consider the latest WBA HW rankings. Both Charr (regular) and Helenius (Gold) are world champions, Trevor Bryan is #1 contender and Charles Martin and Chris Arreolla are #6 and 7.

 

The 'worst' two (in terms of current policy misjudgments) are still the cumulative best two, and will be so long after their current foibles are forgotten. Contrary opinions are mostly overreaction by either younger fans that don't understand things fluctuate over time and that posterity a few generations hence won't care about the WBC's or WBA's errors in a period of a year or five - or by those pushing certain...other agendas.

It would take LOT for the IBF to actually surpass them in the view of those whose opinions are most pertinent - the fighters themselves, and promoters. FMJ for instance grew up desiring the green belt, and as the longtime p4p vanguard and standard-bearing ambassador of pugilism - for better or worse - has inspired a host of new boxers in his wake craving it because he (and greats before him) did. Promoters will always see dollar signs attached to the recognizable belts, names, and lineages.

It would take decades of constant gross tailspinning incompetence by the Big Two for either to be supplanted at this point...and the WBO essentially doesn't have a prayer in this lifetime of doing aught but maybe (if they play their cards perfectly) reach the rung where the IBF perches now.

"Throw out the sanctioning bodies" is as much an eye-roll stance as some pimply teenager reading Marx the first time and telling everyone they've figured out the world's problems.

The big four are deeply flawed in different ways, at times incredibly frustrating, but they are what we've got and they are an integral part of the sport whether we like it or not ..and will be, probably for the duration of the sport's lifetime. Thinking otherwise is the naïveté of the young inexperienced revolutionary.

 

Happened long before that mate

 

don’t recall multiple champions in a weight class occurring regularly before the late 70’s/early 80’s

 

Not decades.

A generation.

 

You might not recall it, but it's still the case mate.

WBA was not the first splinter in terms of world champions.

 

Ok provide proof then

 

That's true...in fact if people read the thread I posted on page 1 (second reply to Georgie Boy's op) you'd see there was in fact NEVER a time in boxing history when there was a single voice of authority declaring an undisputed 'single world champ per division'. You had little regional outfits claiming it from the late 19th century into the interregnum/prohy years, and then you had the NYSAC and NBA (forerunners of the WBC and WBA) respectively throwing their weight around and claiming to be the sole arbiters of sanctioning world title bouts from 1920 and 1921. So...yeah. "let's make prizefighting one champ per weight class again" is a pipe dream based on the illusion that was ever in fact the case.

 

Well its common knowledge but after the Walker Law there was the NYSAC and the NBA and there are many times when they recognised different champions in the same division.

Before that boxing worked on a claimant system and often times there were multiple claimants who would seek to unify their claims against each other.

 

yes but I said regularly

usually before the late 70’s they recognised the same man as champion