Is Tyson Fury still lineal champion ?

Should be. The Ring still have him as Champion, I say give him another 6 months to get himself back

 

Should be for sure. He's officially the #1 Heavyweight even if he ends up stripped off all titles.

 

Yeah until he gets beat or it becomes obvious he's retired for good.
Besides, until someone else comes to the fore as a suitable replacement (eg. a unified or undisputed/multi-belt champion) there's no reason to dispute it.

Povetkin, Wilder, Ortiz, Joshua, Parker etc. need to fight each other and the winner might then have the right to say the fat bloke's no longer relevant.

 

Yes, until a new lineancy is formed.

 

Not according to the TBRB, after his "retirement" and "unretirement" Pacquiao style. HW is now vacant according to them.
The Ring still has him as champion, but it looks like there's a very good chance he won't be able to honor their rules. Also the Ring belt is NOT the lineal title. Often confused with it, because they went hand in hand so many times in the past.

So it's up to debate, like the lineal title has been so many times. It's lost its substance more and more the last couple of decades, because nowadays it's often the championship of debate and boxers that don't defend for one reason or another.

The UKAD hearing could have given a lot of clarity about his future (or lack thereof) in boxing.

 

Obviously there's no such thing as 'the' lineal championship. The Ring and others have differing takes and criteria for it. Which makes the concept pretty impossible. I think the Ring however made the best choice re Fury, Pac, and Stevenson. Fury's shown that there's no such thing as an official retirement in boxing, and we can't go by a fighter's word. JHe's ranted on twitter that he's retired and unretired dozens of times, and they were all either just attempts to wind up the public and draw attention to himself or the flighty raving of a mentally unstable man, and not at all sincere, sober commitments to not box again. He should remain champion till he proves his word by staying inactive.

Similarly, Pac should not have lost his championship status after his casual talk of retirement after the Bradley rematch. He announced the Vargas fight and was back in the gym a month later. It was less than 5 months inactivity, while he had almost a year inactivity of the Floyd fight. It's ridiculous.

And Stevenson, the Ring got it right stripping him. If these lineal fantasy titles want to give championships clarity and integrity they can't let a guy hold a championship hostage for years while avoiding the top challengers.

 

No. He is a disgraced drug cheat serving a long ban that nobody is allowed to talk about or report. Ooopps.

 

IMO after 18 months of inactivity on Fury's side - especially when its obvious its down to laziness and not any injury - we need to acknowledge the lineal title has become vacant. And that opens the door to a new lineal champ if the #1 and #2 HW fighters get in the ring.

 

Potential new lineal champ could be the winner of AJ vs. Wlad <-> vs <-> winner of Wilder vs. Povetkin.

 

REALLY? OK then.

 

So what if Fury comes back and fights a top contender before that happens ?

Whoever the #1 and #2 HW fighters are at the moment, I doubt they are waiting for me or you to declare the lineal title vacant.
That's not the reason they aren't fighting each other.

The top fighters need to fight each other regardles of whether someone might say Fury's the real champion.
If one of them clears up their own mess, THEN they can cast doubt on Fury's claim and eclipse it.

 

He's been out of the ring for more than a year, and it will likely be six months more (minimum) before he steps into the ring again. I'd say there's a time limit after which the sport moves on. What if he says for the next three years 'I'm not retired' but doesn't fight? Does he maintain the linear status? He's the best heavyweight in the world, yes. But linear? That's slipped from his grasp. Hope he can get back to where he was though.

 

The Ring stripping Pacquiao was completely consistent with how they've treated their joke belt for years. They removed Huck from their cruiserweight rankings for taking a single fight at heavyweight for instance just so they could have their belt on the line for Hernandez-Cunningham. Likewise they used Bradley's brief promotional dispute to make Khan-Garcia a fight to fill The Ring vacancy at unior welter (though they had already instituted their awful policy changes where a #1 vs #5 fight could be for a vacant Ring title by that point). I really didn't care either way about stripping Pacuiao since it's questionable to me whether Pacquiao-Bradley III should've been a lineage creating fight in the first place and also because they let Pacquiao hold the 140 title for way too long after he had made it clear he was done with that division.

Stevenson is still the lineal champion at light heavyweight. The Ring's justification for stripping him of their belt was garbage given that Fonfara should've met the criteria for a top 5 fighter at the weight but their rankings at 175 were absurd. It's also worth pointing out that the then #2 fighter in the division turned down a shot at the lineal title when his side realized they couldn't win a purse bid.