WBC creating new belt for Mayweather-Pacquiao fight

By Boxing News - 02/26/2015 - Comments

floyd8282828By Chris Williams: The World Boxing Council is creating a brand new commissioned WBC belt to hand out for the winner of the May 2nd mega-fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new WBC belt will be littered with emeralds and it possibly will have plantinum to increase the value of the strap.

Just why the WBC feels it’s necessary to create this new trinket is unknown, because Mayweather’s WBC welterweight title will be up for grabs for the fight. It’s not the case of the WBC being locked out of the fight due to one of their titles not being on the line.

The WBC will be getting a sanctioning fee for the fight, and that makes it kind of strange that they’re creating a new trinket.

“For this special recognition I would like to have emeralds or platinum, but everything will be defined during the next weeks,” WBC president Mauricio Sualaiman said via WBCboxing.com. “This is because of the magnitude of the event, which will be broadcast via TV networks globally.”

In the past, the WBC created the WBC Diamond belt that they handed out to the winner of the 2009 fight between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. This was a fight that took place at a catch-weight handicap for Pacquiao, who won his 6th division world title. Oddly enough, there wasn’t an asterisk next to Pacquiao’s title win despite the fight being held at a catch-weight instead of at the full weight for the welterweight division.

There aren’t handicaps in the NFL and in the NBA, but if there were it would be interesting to see how the fans would see the winner of the championships. Would a Super Bowl champion be respected by NFL fans if they knew there was a handicap involved in winning the game? Would a baseball player be seen as the greatest home run hitter ever if the fences were brought in 20 feet to make it easier for him to hit home runs and break the home run record?

“It is a big shame that tickets are staying with wealthy people. However, boxing fans will have the opportunity to watch the fight via TV. Economic interests are involved with resulting high prices,” Suliaman said.

Yes, the cost of the tickets are out of this world for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, but that’s the way it should be. It’s a tremendous fight and it’s a once in a lifetime type of event. I don’t see there being another fight of this magnitude for the next 50 years. These stars are just too huge, and you don’t see a fight like this happening all that often.

The last time a huge fight like this took place was back on March 8th, 1971 when Muhammad Ali took on a young Joe Frazier in The Fight of the Century. Frazier wound up winning the fight by a 15 round decision. It was a great fight, but it’s been 44 years since that fight took place.

The sport has changed with fights now only 15 years, and the sanction bodies have spoiled things by watering down the sport with there now being five world titles in every division. You get multiple champions, who only rarely fight each other. Most of the time, the champions sit on their belts and milk their titles against weak opposition in the watered down divisions.



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