By Al Francis: Long gone are the days when only one fighter could stand above all others in a given weight class and call himself the legitimate world champion, today boxing is littered with belt holders claiming to be ‘world champion’. Typically there are four major bodies we recognize as genuine world titles, the WBC, WBA, WBO and the IBF, but there are several more used to pitch naive TV executives to screen various fights. Ring magazine also award a title belt, attempting to bring more clarity and prestige back to boxing, but which of these should we recognize?

Of the four major sanctioning bodies, many observers see the WBC belt as the most prestigious as it was the original body. It has the longest history of champions but also the longest history of corruption. The WBC claims to be a non profit organization but like the other bodies, they take a percentage of a fighters purse as a sanctioning fee which opens the door to corrupt rankings, ranking fighters that bring more money to the table higher than more deserving challengers. The sanctioning fee should be a set price and not a percentage. Take Julio Cesar Chavez jr, who has recently been made mandatory challenger for Sergio Martinez’ junior middleweight crown. Chavez jr has not beaten any top contenders yet he’s mandated to fight for the world title. This is because he is the son of a legend and gets high tv ratings and is well known in his native Mexico, therefore the WBC will get a larger sanctioning fee from Chavez jr than more deserving challenger’s Kermit Cintron and Jamie Moore who are inexplicably ranked lower than him. James Toney famously saying that the WBC stands for “We be crooks” comes to mind.

The others are no better, the WBA installed a ‘super championship’ status a few years ago which doesn’t seem to make any sense. When a WBA champion unifies the title with another belt, they are elevated to WBA ‘super’ champion and then pit two challengers to vie for the WBA ‘regular’ title, thus creating more sanctioning fee’s for the body. It’s all very confusing. And then there’s interim titles, a concept the WBO seem to have mastered. The WBO seem to doing less final eliminators and more intirim title fights, again collecting higher sanctioning fee’s. The IBF are leading the way in terms of inexplicably stripping champions, often enforcing mandatories ranked outside of any independent top 10.

The IBO was established a few years ago and have been steadily rising, they offer a different way of sanctioning than the other bodies. They don’t enforce mandatories and operate a computer scoring system free of promoter’s bribes and corruption. However if they don’t have mandatory contenders then surely their is no point in ranking fighters. Many elite champions have been fighting for the IBO in the last few years such as Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao. This certainly gives the IBO a boost but for every elite champion they also have a champion no one’s heard of ranked outside the top 50, so the IBO surely can’t be recognized as THE belt to have.

This brings us to the Ring title. The Ring’s championship policy is as follows: ‘Championship vacancies can be filled by winning a box-off between The Ring’s number-one and number-two contenders, or, in certain instances, a box-off between our number-one and number-three contenders.’ Current Ring champions are Wladimir Klitschko, Tomasz Adamek, Kelly Pavlik, Manny Pacquiao, Juan Manuel Marquez and Ivan Calderon, not a bad bunch! Each of these champions have proved that they are the very best in their respective weight classes. The Ring belt is by far the hardest belt to win in boxing so it can be viewed as the most prestigious, however its still a far cry from being the perfect world title. There are currently 11 weight classes left vacant, and because they don’t strip champions, some weight classes can freeze up for a while if a champion competes outside the weight but doesn’t relinquish the title.

I think the best way to recognise the real world champion in each weight class is simply to regard the best title holder as the true world champion, where there is a Ring champion in place, it will usually be that title holder. If no Ring champion is in place we must look at the alphabet title holder with the strongest claim as the true world champion, for example, Chad Dawson at light heavy, Mikkel Kessler at super middle and Chris John at feather. Ring magazine would prefer us to boycott all the sanctioning bodies but it just isn’t practical. We must recognise the Ring title above all others for the elite level champions that have worn the belt but sadly we just cannot ignore the sanctioning bodies. Look at Joe Calzaghe’s career, he won the Ring title by defeating Jeff Lacy in 2006 after a long and sometimes tedious reign as WBO champion, but for 9 years the match against Ring’s number 2 rated fighter was too difficult to make. Are we supposed to believe Calzaghe only became a true champion in 2006? Anyone who does is just naive. Up until that point no one really knew how good the welshman was but his fights after that point tell us that he must have been the best at the weight for as long as he held the WBO belt. From 1997 to 2006 no one can really suggest that any of the rival champions were better than Calzaghe, this makes Joe’s WBO reign valid from the start, even though he didn’t get the chance to prove it until 2006.

So the answer to the question which belt should we recognize above the rest is Ring’s belt while also recognizing the four major sanctioning bodies, so essentially all the belts! So there you have it, all that talk and analysis for next to no real conclusion and no real clarity on the situation! Maybe someday boxing will sort itself out, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but for now and the foreseeable future we’re stuck with the usual serving of alphabet soup!