Why so much hate for the WBO around here

Yeah, The Ring belt has no legitimacy, you're right. It can't when Golden Boy Promotions owns it.

Yeah, agreed on the boxing mags as well - Boxing Monthly, Boxing News, The Ring and KO were the ones I'd pick up regularly. Boxing Monthly was the best.

 

I was considering a thread asking when posters here started giving it legitimacy at all

Oscar is regularly called a 6 division champ but several of those were WBO

Calzaghe had a long reign, WBO at 168

Pacquiao has competed for the WBO on several occasions

In recent boxing documentaries and specials I have seen Morrison and Mercer referred to as champions

What do you think of those specific scenarios and is there a timeline when you considered it illegitimate but then began recognizing it?

What were your thoughts regarding the IBF that preceded it by a few years

 

Eubank, Calzaghe, etc. then made tons of WBO defenses staying at home and not going after more legitimate titles for many years. They made great $ doing this - low risk, high reward.

 

The overall quality of writing is much weaker, though.

 

The WBO were at a disadvantage from the off because they tried to forge their own path rather than simply award their inaugural titles to men who already held major belts and / or were generally accepted as the best in their division at that time, ala the IBF. So while the IBF's earliest champions were Larry Holmes, Michael Spinks, Marvin Hagler, Donald Curry, Aaron Pryor etc., the WBO's included the likes of Francisco Damiani, Doug De Witt and Genaro Léon.

Granted, there were some decent names who took inaugural WBO titles in the late eighties such as Moorer and Hearns, but the former was largely seen as unproven and his WBO title merely a gimmick (I believe it was Moorer who vacated the WBO on the basis of it, "******ing his career"), and the latter was seen as damaged goods, way past his best and no longer a threat to the very best men in his weight classes, and his shaky performance against Kinchen for the WBO belt seemed to bear that out.

First impressions can be pretty powerful and difficult to dislodge, and straight away the WBO was (fairly at the time, you'd have to say) just seen as an organisation for the also-rans rather than divisional kingpins. I'm pretty sure if you watch De la Hoya's or Bowe's fights around the 1995 mark, HBO at that time still made the point that they didn't recognise the WBO and therefore didn't consider either man world champions - it's only retrospectively that De la Hoya was talked about as a former title holder at 130 lb, or Bowe was referred to as a two-time champion. Those early years left the WBO with a serious image problem which they've had a hard time shifting, and even today I think most fans see them as fourth in line, albeit by much smaller margins these days.

I think by 1996/97 it probably started to gain some grudging recognition across the board. It wasn't until then that the WBO boasted any really good champions who were right at or near the top of their division, or unified it with some other belts. Guys like Barrera and Hamed were probably the frontrunners in terms of legitimising it somewhat. But even so, the likes of Michalczewski, Calzaghe, Grigorian etc. ensured it never quite had the cachet of the WBC, WBA or IBF well in to the new century.

Mind you, these days they're all a shower of sh*t, and are pretty much as bad as each other.

 

I'd sure love to see us get back to one World Champion (wouldn't we all?). And I love the idea of regional belts for fighters to work their way up through. In the U.S., city championship -> state championship -> U.S. championship -> North American championship. Same for other parts of the world. And no stripping of a lower belt if you fight for an upper belt (but if you win the upper belt, you give up the lower one). So, in this scenario, Tyson Fury would be the world champion, while Deontay Wilder would be the North American champ, and Anthony Joshua would be the Commonwealth champ. There's no shame in being a champion of an entire continent. Plenty of title defenses to go around. It's just that it'd be obvious it's not for the big important World Title.

Also, there's no shame in two contenders fighting in a big money bout. "Jarrell Miller gets his shot at the big time against Commonwealth champ Anthony Joshua in Madison Square Garden! The winner could get Tyson Fury!" It's still an interesting fight, even though it wouldn't be for any title as Miller is American. No silly diluted WBS titles are necessary to make this an interesting contest. Remember when "I coulda been a contender" meant something?

The WBS organizations... they're just doing it wrong and making things more confusing for all but the most ardent fans. And when a new one pops up, a la the WBO in the late 80's, I just go, "Oh no. Not another one. They're not going to do it right."

 

Deontay Wilder doesn't exist. He is a mass delusion of America's need to have a scary ass heavyweight. Tyson Fury literally drew with a nobody.

 

before a certain date it wasnt, this is a fact, like say Holocaust for instance happened...noone saying it didnt later on changes what happened.

once wbo was recognised outside itself, noone has an issue with it being recognised.

 

ibf took half the 80s to be recognised eventually. Its the main reason Holmes get stick for elongating his reign in the mid80s when he was clearly on the fade....though he had the lineal to yield him leverage.

similarly the wbo took the late 90s up to 2004 to be recognised.

 

The original IBF champions were no more or less legit overall than the others of the time:

HW Larry Holmes
CW Marvin Camel
LHW Michael Spinks
SMW Murray Sutherland
MW Marvin Hagler
JMW Mark Medal
WW Donald Curry
JWW Aaron Pryor
LW Charlie "Choo Choo" Brown
JLW Yuh Hwan-kil
FW Min-Keun Oh
JFW Bobby Berna
BW Satoshi Shingaki
JBW Chun Ju-do
Fly Kwon Soon-chun
JFly Dodie Boy Peñalosa

 

Excellent post.

 

So much hate for the WBO around here..? I would say the WBA is disliked more.

 

It was the IBO of the 80's and 90´s.
That's why guys like Calzaghe and Michalczewski get shat on some times. They had impressively long reigns, but they held a secondary belt.

 

When it formed it looked like a cynical exercise in adding value to mediocre fighters by adding a spurious 'world' title to their match ups. This impression was only strengthened by the obvious affiliation of certain promoters and the convenient decisions that the WBO made frequently in the interests of said promoters.

As time has gone on I wouldn't say the prestige of the WBO has grown as much as the prestige of the older three organisations has sunk until such time as they are indistinguishable. All as mired as each other in the morass.

One difference though is that it used to be a safe assumption that the WBO holder was the weakest of the four 'champions' but that's clearly no longer the case, at least as a general rule. So that's progress of some description I guess?

 

Here are some things the WBO didn't do at HW.
1. Strip a heavyweight champion after beating Klitschko because they were forced to take a rematch with Klitschko, then putting on Martin versus Glazkov for the title. (IBF)
2. Creating a ridiculous 'regular champion' category and then having Charr as that champion. (WBA)
3. Making the fights Wilder - Obese Stiverne II and Wilder - Shot Arreola for the heavyweight championship of the world. (WBC)

Surely putting Tom near the top doesn't eclipse these embarrassing acts. They're all a joke in their own way.