The days of the british champs are over.

Haye has announced that he his moving to Heavyweight, this means he has relenquished all his Cruiserweight belts. WBA, WBC, and WBO will start having their eliminators for their belts soon enough.

 

atsch

 

Witter is still champ and I am not sad to lode that bum Rees. Haye is still linear champ until he fights at heavyweight. Khan could be a world champ this year also

 

He hasn't relinquished any of them. Same as Calzaghe still has belts at SMW despite fighting at LHW this weekend. Pavlik still has belts at MW despite his last fight being at a higher weight. Etc.

 

Haye is gone stop trying to hold on to him, he is the new guy in the HW division right now.

I doubt Khan will beat top level fighters in lightweight, his chin is too weak.

 

I'm new here, am not involved in boxing in any way, and I don't post much (you'll soon find out why), but my uninformed take as an interested observer is this: why would Americans want to dominate all the divisions anyway?

It seems like all the big fights are still getting made there (for reasons that escape me btw), and having more international champions means the sport can attract more audiences worldwide than they would if it was a closed shop.

Reading some of the posts here (the forum, not the thread), more than a few posters don't appear to be too concerned about the future of the sport, and would seemingly rather see it dwindle into a parochial shadow of it's former self than see another nation's fighter win "their" belts.

If boxing were to become a merry-go-round where the same few Americans fight each other for "world" titles, with the occasional foreigner thrown into the mix for appearances sake, the world would probably turn over to something else, as happens with some other US sports that claim to decide "world" titles (with some specific geographical exceptions). I know I would.

I'm sure someone will quote huge PPV figures for some "superfight" or other in response, but those numbers don't take into account the apparently fragile infrastructure of the amateur sport in the US (according to some professional US boxers I've seen interviewed - okay, just one, Evander Holyfield, but I will take his word for it), and the subsequent drop in competitors at grass roots level, attracted to less high-risk pastimes.

People may watch on TV, but in that arena boxing is just one of a number of sports competing for ratings - if the product they're selling stinks because of a lack of participants (or dodgy decisions, or confusion over the numerous ABC belts), the fickle public will no doubt find something else to watch that guarantees both excitement and high standards of competition.

What that has to do with David Haye, I don't know, but the tone of some posts in this thread seem to display the kind of attitude that will hurt boxing in the long run. I do want to see the hometown fighter win, but not at the cost of the enjoyment of the casual spectator, since we probably make up more of the income of boxing than does the hardcore fanatic, especially when factoring in the global TV audience. (I'm just guessing, really, I have no facts and figures to back that up, but it seemed to make sense when I typed it.)