Probably a stupid post that will plummet to the bottom of the page faster than Khan vs Alvarez, but I was just thinking about how frustrating boxing can be in that we so often don't get to see the fights we really want. Just want to posit a solution. I'm working this out as I type. The top six-ranked boxers in each weight form a league, and each fights the other five over the course of 16 months, allowing four months between fights. You score, oh I dunno, 3 points for a win, 5 for a knockout. At the end of the 16 months, if two fighters are tied, they fight to crown the league winner (or just use their head-to-head result. I think enough money could be invested in this idea to make it an attractive enough prospect for any fighter to participate. For the first time, we'd be guaranteed to see the best in the division fight each other. The 6th and 5th-placed boxers could be replaced by the 7th and 8th-ranked for the next season. For the first time, top-6 rankings would be entirely non-arbitrary. It's kind of like a rolling Super 6. You could have entire cards devoted to top-6 bouts. There are some obvious flaws. If a fighter starts the season at light-heavy, he has to wait 18 months before being able to move up to cruiser, and he'd be unranked at that weight. Any injuries could **** the whole schedule up. But in principle, anyone have any thoughts on this? Has anything like it been attempted before?
I definitely see where your coming from. I think it might work if it was every 4 years or so, and the time inbetween was almost like a qualification process, so there would be incentive to fight good opposition at all levels. I kinda doubt anything like that will ever happen though, right now I think the best we can hope for is for the sanctioning bodies to get their rankings straight so we don't have fighters beating one or two mediocre opponents and hiding until they get a title shot. Just look at Whyte, Breazeale, and Miller. In an ideal world they'd all be desperate to fight each other, because they'd know that would be the only way to get to a world championship, but they're all claiming they've earned it by beating guys who're all clearly well outside the top 10.
