Ring Magazine never made Ricardo López their straw champ - why?

In late autumn of 1998, Ricardo "Finito" López fought Rosendo "El Bufalo" Álvarez in a rematch. Finito was 47-0-1 (36), Bufalo was 24-0-1 (17) and both champions reigning in parallel; the only blemish on either man's record being their draw earlier in the year. They respectively held the incipient #1 and #2 ratings by the Ring Magazine (who didn't acknowledge the division prior to 1998). In victory, López unified the WBC, lineal, and WBA titles at 105lbs.

So, you'd think it would be unquestionable that he then, logically, became the Ring Magazine champ, yes?

Nope.

To date they have never designated a single individual their champion at straw/minimumweight. If anybody were to receive the honor, you'd think it would be Finito. To be fair, they never had in their entire history designated a super flyweight champion until exactly five weeks ago, either (in the absence of any previous match satisfying their #1-vs.-#2 standards; most titles changing hands in an endless loop of upsets; ie the unrated José Luis Bueno nabbing the green belt from longtime division ruler Sung Kil Moon). But straw is now the outlier, the only remaining division in which they never have awarded their belt - even though you can't really make the argument that Wangek deserves it at super fly without retroactively saying that López did, even more so, at straw. Baffling.

 

Once they resumed handing out championships, they couldn't have just rectified the oversight - which basically amounted to administrative negligence, since it was nobody else's fault they stopped handing them out for a period - by retroactively installing him as their straw champ emeritus or something?

 

That signature Nacho Beristáin imprint.