Knowing that in boxing terminology it is accepted that one becomes world champion by taking a title when one does not have one, which implies that: - A title defense is not a title capture. - A unification does not count as a new title capture. Now there is the question of Ring belts. After all, we can perfectly consider that they are more valuable than a WBC belt. To start off I went to look at Mayweather and Pacquiao: If I count correctly Mayweather became world champion 8 times during his career. And Pacquiao would have been 9 times without the Ring titles, and 11 times if you take them into account. Another boxer did better?
Oscar Dela Hoya had 11 world titles in 6 divisions according from Wikipedia. I remember it was quite a long introduction of "former" for him during his bout with the PacMan.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you had a better career just because you won more titles. Marciano only won the heavyweight championship once. If he had lost a couple fights and then won the title back a couple times, that’s obviously less impressive than just winning every fight.
I always found it odd that boxers are frequently introduced as (insert number)-time world champion, instead of either how many title fights they've won, or how many times they defended their championship. Being the three-time world champion could mean someone won only three title fights, but could have lost several more. Joe Louis has the most consecutive title defenses at any weight with 26. He also holds the heavyweight record for most title fights wins with 27. Now those are some serious stats. He also only had just one single reign as world champion. So apparently he's only a one-time world champion. And yet we frequently here something like "three-time world champion" as an accolade, which is usually crap compared to what Louis did. I don't get it.
