Did you consider Fury & Foreman champions with no belts?

The best gauge is quality of opponents. If a lineal champ is not beating better opponents than contenders than obviously their claim to lineage is suspect.

Sam Langford for example was fighting better opposition than Jack Johnson during Johnson's title reign

 

The best gauge is quality of opponents. If a lineal champ is not beating better opponents than contenders than obviously their claim to lineage is suspect.

Sam Langford for example was fighting better opposition than Jack Johnson during Johnson's title reign

 

That reminds me that around the mid or late 00s, I actually wrote a letter to The Ring asking them what they would have done regarding Foreman if they were awarding titles around that period.

I remember the response was that they would have criticized him a lot and tried to pressure him to face other top rated HWs, but ultimately he’d still be recognized as The Ring champion since he never lost it in the ring.

 

In fairness, I've said all along that I don't know what the best way to measure it is. I just don't like the way the lineal title is held up as some mythical standard without acknowledgement that it's very flawed and easy to abuse

 

Its funny up to that virtually every consensus lineal champ except Burns had a similar hiatus.

Today Wills would have an alphabet belt after the Firpo win for sure.

 

Seemingly rendering his championship claim meaningless by every sort of logic I can see. If you claim to be the best you need to back it up with results.

Otherwise Fury could have theoretically have retired for 30 years and hold the lineal title hostage the entire time

 

I was going to make a similar point. Larry Holmes avoided Pinklon Thomas & arguably got a gift vs Tim Witherspoon, are we stripping him, too? How many gifts did 70’s Muhammad Ali get while holding the title? At least one, clearly.

No point singling out Foreman & stopping there if the criteria is avoiding certain opponents & getting suspect decisions.

 

I've never understood how anyone thinks Holmes vs Witherspoon is controversial you guys really need to go back and score the fight.

Me and @scartissue both had Holmes clearly beating Witherspoon in the scorecard thread. Holmes won a majority of the first 6 rounds like he did vs Norton, and then when Witherspoon got back into the fight after having a big 9th round. He gave away the later rounds doing an Ali impression.

As for Foreman the difference is whilst Holmes may of chose to not fight a few dangerous contenders at the end of his reign like Page, Thomas, he was still beating ranked contenders Bey beat Page BTW, Williams, Bonecrusher, etc. Foreman however after the Moorer win didn't fight a single opponent in the top 10 which is a big difference.

 

The thing is Lineal sometimes needs some context I give Foreman credit for beating Moorer especially at the age he did it. But realistically everyone knows Moorer scrapped by a Holyfield who was having heart problems and was seriously under par. So whilst Foreman did technically beat the man who held the Lineal title I don't think anyone considered Moorer the best Heavyweight.

Foreman as I said after the Moorer win fought 3 opponents not ranked in the top 10, at the time you had Tyson, Bowe, Lewis, Holyfield, who were all surely rated higher than Foreman by the majority of boxing fans at the time.

Do I think Foreman should've been stripped ? No. But I think he should've forced to fight a top contender or someone in the top 10. I can excuse Foreman because of his age but realistically all he was doing was holding up the division at the time. And at that stage in his career he never had any intentions of fighting a top 10 ranked contender.