Did you consider Fury & Foreman champions with no belts?

I agree. Point is he got 2 more title shots in a row after the Foreman loss and won none of them.

 

You can make an argument Jackson had the claim all along. If we hand Cardiff Sullivans title in 1887 which he would have been today, Jackson ends up lineal champion.

 

No and no.
With Foreman (and I have Foreman in my top 10 ATG heavies) it was clear he was not THE MAN in the division, and his 'defences' show he knew this. I don't really blame him for pushing the narrative because of his age and comeback story at that point. But it was almost a prototype action for Fury later milking this same idea.
With Fury I think there's possibly an argument that he was briefly the legitimate lineal champion after he beat Klitschko. But after his retirement and disappearance it vanished quickly. And he then became the modern poster boy for milking the 'title,' claiming spurious defences against lower level opposition - particularly in later years when both AJ and of course Usyk were threats to his crown.
And this is my problem with the lineal title idea - I am not really a fan. It is largely subjective (especially in the multi belt era, unless you definitively have an undisputed champion who takes on all comers), a concept which, in the wrong hands (e.g. Fury) is easily abused as a marketing tool with no incentive to fight the best opposition.

 

Foreman was the lineal champ regardless but it was not at all clear he wasn't "the guy". There was no clear alternative. Moorer who Foreman knocked out was the main champion in the division until the same month Foreman lost his belt to Briggs. Lennox didn't have a belt for much of Foremans reign and if he was considered the "real champ" this only happened at the very end. Tyson had just come out of prison and got an alphabet belt off Seldon before losing to Holyfield and Holyfield had the Moorer and Bowe losses recently. There was no "real champ" Foreman was hogging the belt from and if there was it was Moorer who he'd already beaten.

Also while AJs title competition was a bit better than Furys or Wilder his fans dramatically overstated that difference. AJ fought ex Wlad opponents and weaker opponents like Fury and shared common opponents with Wilder and fought aged out stars. Not to mention the Ruiz loss. This idea AJ should have been considered the real champ when Fury came back is nonsense. The only way he should have been considered champ is if Fury never returned.


Foreman and Furys competition(except Francis Ngannou) was acceptable for a lineal champion. It was your standard fare fighting unproven undefeateds where some turn into somebodys and some turn into nobodys we've seen since Holmes. Pianeta was a former Wlad opponent. The bigger issue is the 3 year break and the 10 round fights. But in the early days those long breaks were common John L Sullivan, Corbett, Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Willard and Dempsey all taking comparable sabaticals as lineal champ to Fury. After that it took another 90 years to happen again. I think thats a system that generally works. Its more important to keep an intact lineage than to enforce a BS mandatory system that produces a paper champion.

The idea someone could hog the belt for years without fighting anyone good is a real flaw. But its more of a theoretical one people use to complain they aren't seeing the fights they want. A lot of the time the competition people complain about is nominally qualified they just aren't the best contender. And theres this idea the champ is obligated to fight one of the most threatening contenders(who paid the boxing mafia their bribe) every fight or every other fight and if they don't lets blow everything up. And the lineal system is better than that system. And that is the alternative to the lineal system. Not naming a different champ because they have a compelling case to be "the real champ".

Another point if Foremans title opponents were so awful why did Briggs get a title shot his next fight and Schulz got 2 in a row? Foreman v these guys wasn't enough but someone else against them after Foreman fought them was enough for alphabet bodies to sign off?

 

Definitely not Fury since he retired. Foreman is a trickier poposition.

 

Important clarification here while Foreman didn't have the RING title this was because the RING stopped giving out titles during the 90s and not because of anything Foreman did. The RING title is usually a standin for the lineal belt and theres no reason to think Foreman wouldn't have it until the end here.

They stripped Fury but Fury was gone 3 years thats kinda different.

 

Holyfield was only viewed as the number 1 HW because of the legend of Mike Tyson not because he was. He did not deserve to fight for a belt when he fought Tyson. Moorer had beaten him and Bowe had won their trilogy against him.

The Foreman era really was a power vaccum
a)Moorer had the IBF belt and had beaten Holyfield but had lost to Foreman.
b)While Bowe won the Holyfield trilogy he had the WBO belt which wasn't considered major belt then had none. Then you had the Golota DQs where he got the wins but lost any claim he had to being the best HW
c)Lewis got upset by McCall before Foreman won his belt and didn't regain his title until the end of Foremans reign. McCall defended against Holmes, lost to Bruno who lost to Tyson coming out of prison
e)Tyson after not fighting Lennox ceded the WBC belt and won the WBA belt off of Seldon.
f)Holyfield had beaten Foreman but was 4-3 in his last 7 going into the Tyson fights.

When you look at that anarchy Foreman fighting random undefeateds like Grimsley, Savarese(USBA champ) and Briggs seems way more defendable. There was no one champ Foreman had a pressing need to unify against. Only when Lennox beat Golota and Holyfield beat Moorer did the picture begin to clear. This happened in the last 2 months of Foremans lineal reign.

The value of that lineal belt is shown by the fact Lennox fought Shannon Briggs right away after he "beat" Foreman. He wanted the legitamacy that title confered. Also very minor sanctioning bodies recognized the Foreman bouts(the IBA and WBU I think IBA still exists, WBU does not) so there was a physical belt on the line.


Sharkey didn't have a fringe claim he had a claim to the lineage via flukey DQ he then added to this by beating Goddard who had an alternate claim to Mahers. Schmeling is considered to have won the lineal title with a very similar scenario ironically over a different Sharkey. But while at the time the NBA and ABA recognized Stribling and Sharkey the arbiters of popular history have come down on Schmelings side but not (Tom)Sharkeys.

 

Yes but either way that was the case because of the lineal belt. It wasn't a tournament. Lennox had beaten Golota just shortly before Foreman v Briggs so maybe this agreement was made after that. I'm not sure if Foreman committed to fighting Lewis if he were to win he might have retired regardless he would have been 49 when the Lewis fight occurred. As incredible as it would have been to see Foreman one shot Lennox damm that would be asking an awful lot.


And yeah mistake Briggs wasn't undefeated he had a loss to Darroll Wilson.

 

Foreman fighting unranked opponent after unranked opponent is totally indefensible if the lineal title is to have any credibility.

If there is no outstanding contender he should still obviously face guys in the top 10 rather than nonentities. If there is no clear number one obviously that doesn't give him the right to face poor opposition over and over again

 

Yes.
And I'll explain that to you with the help of a third example - that of Michael Jynx Spinks.

Tyson was the undisputed champion, but without a win over Spinks - he didn't have everything.

 

I don't understand the difference between Ring and lineal champions.