What is a lineal champion

By beating the man who was the man & thereby becoming the man.

I find it a useful principle to apply for determining who the real H/W champion of the world is in a split titles era but wouldn't recommend applying it to the other weight divisions.

 

Like Sandman said but obviously championship lineal lines get broken. It doesn't mean anything anymore really to me. It's turned into another network ploy of 'our champion is the real champion' tagline.

 

Lineal means nothing.

Take Tyson Fury for example, he has fought 1.5 times on average per year since the Klitschko fight and hasn’t really fought anyone of note either.

It is basically a make believe verbal title that gets held hostage by inactive fighters, so they can stay in the loop until they see an opening to fight weak opponents in order to avoid fighting people who can dethrone them

 

Yep and this type of activity is one of the bigger reasons why we have weak, watered down fights & fighters.

 

It's a term used by boxing fans to win an argument when it suits their needs. Active boxers themselves basically never use this term.

 

Yup, it will always be like that until there is one governing body across the entire sport and only two belts per division. There should only be an interim belt and the actual title, an interim should only be put into play in the event that the title holder is injured an unable to defend. This would eradicate all bull5hit in the sport regarding who is the best fighter in each division.

 

Probably the most easily defined thing in all of boxing.

Google "what Ric Flair said".

 

Lineal means you THE MAN in yo division usually when the clear cut #1&2 fight or if you have a unified champ that gets stripped for some reason. In terms of ranking undisputed champ>lineal>unified>1-belt champion… if devin Haney dropped all the titles but the WBC because he didn’t want to pay the fees he’d still be the lineal Champ… just a fancy way of saying who THE REAL MAN is at a given weight

 

Like George Foreman and Shannon Briggs?

 

The problem is when there is a break in the lineage, without an undisputed fight, who actually decides who the man of the division is?

Some say it's when #1 fights #2 (or even #3), but that seems to have been extremely subjective with so many ranking bodies. For example, I recall people acknowledging Vitali was lineal after he beat Sanders for the Ring title in 2004. That lineage then breaking when he retired in 2005. This allowed Wlad to become Ring champion by defeating Chagaev in 2009. We should note this is the date used by many as when Wlad became Lineal Champion, and yet Vitali is ignored.

Vitali's claim to being the Lineal Champion seems to be equal that of Wlad's and yet all this seems to have been brushed under the carpet these days. I suspect because it causes issues with Fury's habit of retiring and un-retiring, much like Vitali did.

I know you are a big fan of Vitali, so I am curious what your position is on this.

 

Fair point, but Chagaev was #3 when Wladimir beat him to become lineal with Vitali being #2. So, we are back to making exceptions again.

Why not think of it like royal succession to the throne. A break for retirement could be considered similar to when a tragedy wipes out a royal line, so we should trace it back to find the next most suitable candidate.

• Lennox Lewis lost the lineage and then won it back from Hasim Rahman in 2001. So why not rewind to there, then trace the alternative lineage forward to the date of Lewis’ retirement.
• Hasim would next lose to Evander Holyfield in 2002.
• Holyfield would then lose to Chris Byrd that same year.
• That would mean when Lennox Lewis retired in 2004, Chris Byrd should be acknowledged as the Lineal Champion from that point.
• Byrd then lost to Wladimir Klitschko in 2006.
• Wladimir holding the title until he would lose it to Tyson Fury in 2015.

I think that is a lot cleaner than what we currently have. I don't agree with making an exception for Wlad because Vitali was his brother. There is a long history of brothers literally killing each other to get to the throne. I also don't like the version where some short-term retirements count, and others don't.

 

Currently it's ESPN marketing scheme in the HW division.
Outside HW no one is talking about lineal. When you have a lineal champ who has retired multiple times, fought so many bums, fought very rarely and got caught on PEDs, you know the title means nothing.