Lineage of the WBA HW belt during the last 10 years…

I’ve done a little bit of research on the WBA HW belt and came to the conclusion that during the last 10 years, it has been a disgraceful, complete joke, full of controversial decisions, dull fights and laughable ‘champs’!
The WBA should be ashamed of themselves for letting something like this happen. The WBA HW belt should not be regarded as a worthy belt anymore, it holds no more credibility than the IBA or the WBF HW belts these days. Remember, this is a belt with a long, honourable tradition, and with true champs like Liston, Frazier and Ali… It’s very, very sad indeed.

Here’s the lineage of the WBA HW during the last 10 years: (fights with controversial outcomes are marked in red)

-03 march 2001: John Ruiz wins the belt from Evander Holyfield in their rematch. Holy looked bad in that fight, Ruiz deserved the win, no controversy here.

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-1 march 2003: Former MW Roy Jones outboxes Ruiz and makes him look like an amateur. Roy is now the WBA HW champ but doesn’t defend it.

-13 december 2003: Ruiz wins the ‘interim’ WBA belt against Hasim Rahman. I haven’t seen the fight, so I won’t comment on it.

After Roy vacates the regular belt and chooses to move back down to LHW instead of humiliating Ruiz again, Ruiz becomes the regular WBA HW beltholder – and a 2 time HW ‘champ’…

-17 april 2004: Ruiz defends his belt against Fres Oquendo. Decent win.

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-30 april 2005: Former MW James Toney whoops Ruiz’ ass and knocks him down. Ruiz looked **** again.

Toney gets busted for steroid use and their fight is declared a NC. Ruiz is restored as ‘the champ’.

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-03 june 2006: Valuev makes his first defence against future ATG Owen ‘what the heck’ Beck.

-07 october 2006: Valuev defends his belt against Monte Barrett. At least Valuev stays busy…

-20 january 2007: 3rd defense against Jameel McCline. McCline wins the opening rounds but then suffers a knee injury. McCline ‘wins the event’.

-14 april 2007: 4th defence against Ruslan Chagaev. Boring, close fight that could have gone either way, Chagaev wins by majority decision and gets the belt… He then falls ill.

-19 january 2008: Chagaev defends his belt against Matt Skelton in what probably was the worst HW championship fight in modern history.

After Chagaev gets injured yet again and fails to rematch Valuev, the WBA names him ‘champion in recess’…

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There are now 2 official WBA HW ‘champs’, the regular beltholder Valuev and the ‘champion in recess’ Chagaev – what a nonsense.

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-07 february 2009: after more than a year, Chagaev makes the 2nd defence of his belt against wold-class beater Carl Davis Drumond.

He then vacates his belt to have a go at the real champ Wlad Klitschko. Valuev is now the sole WBA HW beltholder.

-7 november 2009: Valuev loses his belt to David Haye. This was another boring, close fight with a debatable outcome – I had Haye winning by the slightest of margins. Everybody is just happy to see Valuev go away, and Haye is hailed as the new savior of the HW division.

-3 april 2010: Haye defends his belt against John Ruiz - out of all people. At least the fight was somewhat entertaining and had a clear outcome. Ruiz finally retires.


-13 november 2010: 2nd defense against Audley Harrison in an aboslute farce of a fight. This one was maybe even worse than Chagaev-Skelton, but luckily it didn't last as long...

 

Incidentally, Ruiz was promoted by Don King for much of his career. Valuev was also co-promoted by Don King for a time (and by Sauerland). Don King has always had strong ties to the WBA.

 

Well I've seen it, and I thought Golota was straight robbed, as do most people.

 

Well, there's close fights that can go either way, depending on how you score a fight. These are always debatable, or controversial if you will, but never a robbery. SRL - Hagler is a good example of this. The outcome is not clear and unsatisfying, like a draw, no matter how exciting the fight itself might be. These fights usually beg for a rematch.

Then there's close fights where there should still be a clear enough winner. A fight where one fighter wins 7 rounds, but the other wins 5 rounds in a far more dominant fashion would be such a fight. The first fighter must still get the nod, in a close fight.
Valuev-Holyfield was a fight where old man Holy banked at least 6 rounds before slowing down, because Valuev did literally nothing in the first half of the fight. In the latter half of the - still boring - fight, Valuev was arguably the better man and more competitive, and he won his share of rounds, but about 90% of the viewers had Holy winning this fight, in the U.S. AND in Europe. The judges then gave Valuev a majority decision, which was highly controversial and a robbery in my eyes. Although I've seen worse robberies.

You're right in that Haye had no choice but to defend the belt against Ruiz. Blame the WBA for it. But remember, Haye boasted before the fight with Valuev that he would unify the belts right after KOing that bum Valuev... then after the fight it was 'oh wait, I'll have to defend my belt against Ruiz. I didn't know it..' Only that it was written in the Valuev contract :roll: Haye is not stupied, he fooled his fans again.

I'd say the WBO has a much weaker pedigree than the IBF, the WBC or the WBA (the IBF and WBC are faaar from perfect too), but at this point it has more credibility than the WBA. The WBA is like Evander Holyfield - it's shot as hell.