By Allan Fox: Last night, Daniel Jacobs (28-1, 25 KOs) defeated #2 WBA Jarrod Fletcher (18-2, 10 KOs) by a 5th round TKO to win the vacant WBA 160 pound title. It was a good win by Jacobs in proving himself against a guy who arguably should have never been ranked at No.2 given that he was knocked out in the 2nd round by Billy Joe Saunders just two years ago.
To show how messed up the WBA’s rankings are, Saunders is ranked at No.13 by the WBA despite the fact that he has a stoppage win over Fletcher and he’s unbeaten. But what’s more strange is why the WBA has three champions in the middleweight division.
Jacobs won the WBA World middleweight title last night. But the WBA has Gennady Golovkin as their WBA Super World middleweight title. If that wasn’t enough, the WBA also has an interim WBA middleweight champion in Dmitry Chudinov.
The question is does the WBA realize how badly they’re confusing the fans by having multiple champions? Is this a greed thing from them by having 3 champions in one weight class or are they doing this because they care about the athletes and want to make sure they can have as many champions as possible so that guys with lesser talent can get a chance to win a title that they might not otherwise have won.
I like Jacobs a lot as a fighter, but let’s not get things twisted. Had he been in the ring with Golovkin last night instead of Fletcher, Jacobs likely would have been on his back by the 5th round counting stars instead of talking about wanting to fight WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin in a unification match.
Jacobs and Chudinov are good fighters, but it’s really a huge stretch to call either of them a champion, because they didn’t beat anyone to pick up their belts and the guy that fans recognize as the legit WBA champion is Golovkin.
Jacobs and Chudinov are like nominal champions, and just holding straps without a lot of meaning except to fans who aren’t clear on the fact that the WBA has three champions at 160 instead of just one.
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