i was furious when during the countdown to jmm-pac they said...

Throwing the belt in the trash, pro longed inactivity, refusing to fight the mando because you don't think you'll look good against them, vacating your belt to fight an unworthy challenger for monetary purposes; these are all good reasons for why a person could lose their belt outside the ring. If you disagree, I'd love to see your reasoning.

 

Please don't try and act superior. Your argument is flawed, and continuous leaping around your own points will not change it's flaws. When a sanctioning body strips a fighter, they hold a fight between to other fighter for that vacant title. They DECIDE, based on an opinion based list, who those two fighters are. It's an opinion. The subsequent fight is meaningless because it has no true meaning behind it and certainly doesn't follow the meaning of "champion" in sports terms.

That last bit of logic still makes no sense. You never answered my question, in fact you dodged it entirely. Why is it when the fighter who was the undisputed champion is stripped, he doesn't lose his undisputed status in your equation? Whatever the reason is, that is the same reason it must be passed to the fighter who defeated him. So answer that question, and you will be enlightened to what the truth is.

 

Because those are not the true circumstances. That is the whole point Reg, and you're the only one not getting it. The orgs set it up so that their cannot be a prolonged unified champion. A fighter cannot fight all their mandatories for EACH org. They overlap and one of the orgs will strip them. This often leads to the fighter vacating the belt (tossing it). Refusing to fight a mandatory to fight ANOTHER mandatory is not a legit reason to remove a champions belt.

That unworthy challenger bit and the fighting a fighter you won't look good against bit are just things you added in to give you an out. It's opinion based and you can always fall back on it.

 

I'll tackle the first highlighted part first. Deciding who the no.1 and no.2 fighter is is certainly based off an opinion. However if fighter A is the WBC no.1 contender, this is not an opinion but a fact. He gained his status based off an opinion, but his current status as the no.1 ranked contender is very much a fact. The same holds true for the winner of the fight. The winner of the fight is the WBC champion, this is a fact. This very same concept holds true in college basketball. UNC is the AP no.1 ranked team in the nation. The AP used opinions in order to decide to rank UNC no.1. Hower, the statement "UNC is the AP no.1 ranked mens college basketball team", is a fact not an opinion.

On to the second highlighted part. I already answered this. I even gave an example. I'll try again. Lennox Lewis wins the WBC/WBA/IBF titles. He is now undisputed because he won all of these belts and held them at the same time. Lennox is stripped of the WBA title. I will still consider him the undisputed champ due to the fact that he still won all 3 belts and held them at the same time and never lost. Now if Holyfield beats Lewis, he only has the WBC/WBA belts. He did not hold all 3 belts without losing.

 

Barrera was slightly past his prime when he lost to Manny. Did he have a pulse when he lost to Marquez? Oh that's right, he had a belt. Of course Marquez's win was more impressive.

No one cares what trinket rides on this bout. This a virtual coin flip between the two best 130 pound fighters in the world. That title is what they are both challenging for. It doesn't need letters to be recognized.

 

It's a fact that they are ranked there, and it is based on an opinion. Someone has decided they are ranked there, but that doesn't make the ranking true or give it any validity or basis. So it's a designation that is stated, and that it is stated is a fact, but that doesn't make the statement itself fact.

As I said in the other thread, I am bored with this and will move on. I know what a champion is. Most here do. Pavlik is the undisputed MW champion. He will be until he vacates it or someone beats him. You can't lose that status outside the ring. Is that flawed? Maybe, but it's less flawed than an organization simly taking your belt because it wants you to fight one fighter while the other orgs want you to fight another. Those things aren't relevant to your status and don't change what you have done in the ring. In a sport where beating the man in front of you gets you his title, it is ludicrous to believe that people think that a fighter shouldn't gain the status of the man he has just beaten in a title fight because of something OUTSIDE the ring.

 

Incredible that this much space can be wasted over the difference between being either a unified champion, an undisputed champion, both, or neither. A unified champion can lose his title via bureacracy. An undisputed champ can only lose his title by losing in the ring, vacating the division, or retiring.

I don't know who claimed earlier that the "Ring" belt is pointless because the media is somehow "outside" of boxing, but I can guarantee that title is better governed by objective decision making than the majority of the alphabet titles.

 

I claimed it. But I don't believe that.

The poster I am debating with recognizes Hopkins as a LHW champ even though he only holds the Ring title. I was pointing out that tecnically they aren't part of the sport, but just a magazine. So if you recognize Hopkins despite this technicallity, then why not recognize other champions despite the technicallity of them not holding actual belts because they were stripped.

 

I'll go through my list again

HW - Tyson, Douglas, Holyfield(none of these 3 were stripped), Bowe(threw his WBC belt in the trash because he didn't want to fight Lewis, fought some bum instead), Lewis(was stripped because he didn't want to fight Byrd, and Ruiz)

CW - Bell(was stripped for not fighting Cunningham, went 15 months without fighting)

LHW - Jones(was stripped I believe for going up to HW, the WBC almost went bankrupt for allowing him to keep a title he relinquished)

SMW - Joe. C(vacated the IBF belt for fighting Manfedo instead of his mando, this happened before he fought Kessler)

MW - Hopkins(never stripped), Taylor(stripped for rematching Hopkins)

JMW - Wright(never stripped)

WW - Spinks(never stripped), Judah(stripped for losing)

JWW - Tszyu(stripped for overly long periods of inactivity).

 

Lewis was fighting better fighters than Byrd and Ruiz. Bad stipping.

Bell is debatable. He was injured according to him. I don't agree with stripping injured fighters unless they are inactive for a year. They stripped him BEFORE this, and Bell then decided to fight in the HW eliminator. It never happened so he fought Mormeck and lost his other two belts.

Calzaghe dropped his belt rather than face his mandatory because HBO wouldn't cover the mandatory fight. He needed name recognition so he could get a MUCH better fighter in the ring, either Taylor or Kessler. His mandatory would have prevented such a possibility. Bad stripping.

Wright WAS stripped of the IBF between the Mosley fights for not fighting his mandatory. Bad stripping.

Tsyzu was injured, debatable stripping.

Use recent examples. The ABC's are becoming more and more corrupt as time has gone on and have been stripping much more in the late 90's. It's only getting worse.

 

Lewis was stripped for fighting Michael Lewis(almost was KO'D by Golota in his previous fight), and for signing to fight Kirk Johnson(bum), neither one of these strippings were that bad.

Bell was stripped after he claimed he had a toothache(bull****)

Calzaghe - Sorry, you can't tell challengers they have to step aside so the champion can get a better payday against a crap fighter(I understand why Joe did it, but the IBF had a good case against him)

Wright - Don't know the story

Tszyu - Fought like once in 3 years. How long is he supposed to be able to hold up the division?

The fact of the matter is, many fighters have obtained undisputed staus. Including a decent amount in recent history. With the WBA super champ belt, and the WBC loose defense policy, an undisputed fighter really only has to worry about his IBF obligations. The IBF isn't unreasonable(most of the time).

 

Lennox Lewis was stripped for fighting Michael Grant who was unbeaten and recognized as the 2nd best HW in the world. Better than Ruiz and Byrd. Johnson was no more of a bum than Ruiz.

Bell- You can't decide a toothace is BS. Your opinion. If it was infected, it surely wasn't going to get through a pro boxing match. His subsequent absence is better grounds.

Tsyzu was injured and again debatable.

Wright was a mandatory thing.

Calzaghe certainly was a bad stripping. ABC orgs allow for optional defenses. They just pick and choose when and where they are going to allow them without rhyme or reason. They make challengers step aside all the time. You don't strip a champion who is about to fight a well known fighter and then fight either one of 2 unbeaten champions.

They always have "reasons" for stripping. Fact is, nearly all the recent undisputed champions are stripped. And even most chances at undisputed titls are lost because a champion is stripped for trying to unify to begin with.

 

Calzaghe was never stripped, he vacated his title. This is all irrelevant anyway. Your contention is that under my standards, there won't be anymore undisputed champs. I've proven that this is flawed assumption. There isn't even much debate about this. I've listed numerous undisputed champs over just the past 18 years. I've also listed a few guys who are one fight way from undisputed status. So I really don't know how you can seriously try to argue that the standard is too high. Haye could fight Cunningham in May, not be stripped and become undisputed. So it's not as hard as you make it out to be.

 

I have made my point, and history shows it's not flawed. If anything, you proved my point for me. As time has gone on, there are less and less undisputed champions by your standards. (None right now by yours). Cunningham is more likely to be stripped before he makes that fight history has shown us. There are far more strippings than unifications. It's getting worse and will continue to if we recognize the new champion who didn't win it in the ring. Bottom line, win the title in the ring and lose it there as well.

 

First off, Cunningham already filled his mado by fighting Huck. So no, he won't be stripped. As far as Haye, the WBO and WBA don't easily strip unified champs, and the WBC is not real strict with their defense obligations. So Haye could definately fight Cunningham in May without being stripped.

Furthermore, while there are no current undisputed champs, there was I believe at least 3 in 2006 and Calzaghe had a claim in 2007. Some divisions have gone 10-20 years without an undisputed champ. Check out this list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_undisputed_boxing_champions

If you really look at it, gaining undisputed status became much more difficult in the 80's(the IBF was added). However, besides the HW division, most divisions had more undisputed champions in this decade than they did in the 1990's. The JWW division didn't even have an undisputed champ in the 80's or 90's. This would leave me to believe that gaining undisputed status has actually become easier.