By Isaac Brodie: With the list of titleholders in this sport currently reading like a novel the achievement of the deserving champions are totally belittled. In some divisions there are half a dozen fighters stating a claim to divisional supremacy under the facade of interim, regular or whatever other pseudonym can be concocted to arm a paper champion with some letters so they might be sold to the mass audience.
The promotional heavyweights have done a good of smuggling respective titles into their ranks to be juggled amongst their stable. But this does not make real champions. This is not to undermine the achievements of the many deserving champions of the sport, I’m sure that most of them would like nothing more than to add further legitimacy to their titles. However, these champion are still just undermining one another because the only absolute champion as of right now is Wladimir Klitschko, if your ignore his older brother (which at this point seems fair as he is likely to retire without defending his belt again). Even Floyd Mayweather, who without a doubt is the true champion at 147, is not able to call himself the undisputed champion of his division.
This is what makes the junior welterweight division so exciting. As of now there are no promotional barriers to stop any and all of the respective belt holders in this division meeting and unifying. Now that a free agent in Ruslan Provodnikov has captured the only title left under Top Rank, Golden Boy has the opportunity to stage a simple play off including WBA/WBC Danny Garcia, WBO Ruslan Provodnikov, IBF Lamont Peterson, or else a super six style tournament with the addition of Lucas Mattysse and WBA Regular Khabib Allakhverdiev. Or perhaps Judah.
Some of these fighters have already met but the rematches and the other matches that cold be made with any combination of these fighters could result in multiple contenders for fight of the year in 2014. The obvious favorites going in would be Danny and Ruslan, probably in the order, but I’m not going to try and pick any winners or losers because it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that there would be a winner who could call them self the champ without hearing an echo.
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