By Darren Munsey: Boxing is one for the few sports that has several governing bodies. So that got me thinking, are us boxing fans worse of better off for this? Sports as far apart as UFC to soccer all have 1 governing body. We all know who the best is in the respective divisions. Boxing on the other hand has 4 major bodies, the WBC, WBA, WBO and IBF. I am not including organizations such as the IBO, WBU and WBF as these are not recognized as major governing bodies by Sky Sports and the BBC etc. Sky, for example do not include them in their list of world champions. Of the 4 major bodies is 1 more lucrative or ‘’holy’’ than the others? That’s an article in itself……..
So why are we worse off having 4 governing bodies? We’ll first of all boxing does not have a CLEAR winner with 4 world champions at each weight. As human beings it is our instinct to want to know who the best is. Unless you have 1 world champion at each weight it all comes down to opinions and ‘’what ifs’’. The exception to this is when you have an undisputed champion who has unified all the belts but as we know that rarely happens. Unfortunately boxing is a sport where the best do not always fight the best for reasons outside the ring hence undisputed champions are not as common as they should be. Then we have the subject of with so many different versions of the world championship does that devalue what it means to be a world champion? In my opinion of course if does. It is a lot easier to win a world championship now than it was in the 70’s where you had to the absolute BEST to be the world champion. Drilling down further I see the WBA for example have 3, yes 3 world champions in the lightweight division. A ‘’super’’ champion, a ‘’regular’’ champion and a ‘’interim’’ champion. We all know the WBA are doing this to create more revenue but in my opinion it does tarnish the accomplishment of being a world champion. Finally rightly or wrongly Oscar De La Hoya as great as he was would never have been a 6 weight world champion without their being so many governing bodies for example when he beat Sturm to become the middleweight world champion it is clear Sturm and De La Hoya were no where near the best in division at that time with Hopkins around. So do so many governing bodies tarnish the accomplishments of past champions? I would say tarnish No, put into perspective yes?
So why are we better off having 4 governing bodies? Firstly records such as De La Hoya’s would never have happened, again as humans we all like to see records broken and I am sure someone will try to break Manny’s record and it will give us all something to talk about. Secondly if you have 4 champions that means approximately 8 world titles fights a year in each weight division where as if you had 1 champion it could be as low as 2 a year As a boxing fan I like to watch as many world title fights as I can therefore the more world title fights you have the more for fans to enjoy and the increased interest in the sport. Being a Brit I thoroughly enjoyed watching Priince Naseem Hamed’s world title fights. They were always massive events in the UK whether he fought in the UK or the US. It later became apparent that Hamed was not the best in the division with Barrera around so in the old days Hamed may never have been a world champion which for me would have been a great shame as with him putting his world championship ‘’on the line’’ added extra spice and excitement to his fights and also added to his already massive ego which brought more drama to the fights. They are certainly boxing memories I do not want taken away from me.
In my humble opinion I think having more governing bodies adds to the overall excitement of boxing which as a fan of the sport is the most important thing for me. The more world title fights the more excitement. Does having 4 world champions really matter when we all know who the best it? No I don’t think so. We all know that Joe Calzaghe was the best in the Light-heavyweight division when he retired even thought he never held 1 of the 4 main versions of the world title. We all know that Mayweather and Pacquiao are best in welterweight division even though Mayweather is not a champion and I am sure Pacquiao will relinquish the WBO title before long. I think as long as we keep what being a ‘’world champion’’ means today into perspective compared to 40 years ago I for 1 have no problem with having more than 1 governing body.
Thank you to everyone for reading.
Comments are closed.