In September 1944 Holman Williams fought Cocoa Kid for the duration MW title. It was a draw. No one won the belt and shortly after the duration title was scrapped. Are there are any other notable examples in boxing where this has happened? On boxrec you can see it happened at the regional level quite a bit but in fights for world titles it doesn't seem to happen very much. I vaguely remember in the UFC it happened a few years ago. Do you think judges purposely "swerve" in fights for vacant belts to avoid this outcome? You'd think with so many belts strippings and 12 rounders this scenario would happen more.
Listen, I think I know what you're talking about. In my hometown, our grade school, all of us were competing to be vacant, and it was one big, giant draw. A lot of us wound up swerving and got in front of a judge or if the judge was our daddy, we got the belt as the outcome. I don't know if I got the angle of your thread, I have severe ADD and I may not have, but that is the best that I can do.
Rances Barthelemy had this happen with that boy Easter. Cannot for the life of me remember what happened after that. But fights for vacant titles are actually pretty rare. The pre World War One scene was confusing enough that a drawn title fight would just be ignored I'd bet, the claim would evaporate - now, things are so messed up that most of the ABCs just promote their favourite sub-champion to the belt, give it to the silver champion, or the interim champion, or the regular champion. There are a lot more email champs. Draws are rare anyway.
In December 1979, Marvin Camel and Mate Parlov fought to a 15-round majority draw for the vacant (and inaugural) WBC cruiserweight championship — the first belt to be awarded in that weight class, then contested at 190 pounds — in Croatia. Camel won by five points on one card with the other two even. They did it again in March 1980 and Camel won a decision over 15 to claim the crown as the world’s first cruiserweight champ on the undercard of the Larry Holmes-Leroy Jones heavyweight title tilt in Las Vegas. He promptly lost it (by majority decision) to Carlos DeLeon in his first defense.
There have been quite a few. Some that immediately come to mind are Milton McCrory vs. Colin Jones for Ray Leonard's vacant WBC Welterweight Title. Another was Bernard Hopkins vs. Segundo Mercado for Roy Jones' vacant IBF Middleweight Title. (It is often forgotten now that it actually took Hopkins three tries to win a vacant middleweight belt.)
I meant if its a vacant belt judges will intentionally make an effort to not score it even. Like it its 6-5 they would score it 7-5 instead of 6-6.
This reply is like getting a wet blanket placed on my brain. And my avatar. And I may not enjoy the sensation, but gawdammit, do I respect it.
I remember some years back, when WBA was at the peak of it's "belts for everyone" madness - They had John Mark Apolinario and Roberto Vasquez fight for a vacant interim bantamweight belt. They fought twice - and it was a draw both times. I thought at the time it was really funny - and actually positive, since no extra champion was crowned. WBA already had two in that weight-class, Chemito Moreno and Kiko Kameda, which They refused to order to fight for years despite Moreno calling for it.
Milton McCrory Vs Colin Jones I Pretty biased commentator/judges/crowd for this one (some of the most frequent boos I've heard in a match), McCrory was consistently outboxing and getting the better out of nigh every round against Jones, but the man on the mic wouldn't shut up about how "Jones is going to get him now, surely!" despite the fact the he couldn't do anything even when Milton started to fade late into the fight. He landed cleanly multiple times and didn't even back him up, I think it's pretty clear that Laing was no McCrory.