By Gav Duthie: Long gone are the days when we simply had 1 world champion per division. When ‘Homicide Hank’ Henry Armstrong completed a hat-trick of titles becoming featherweight, lightweight and welterweight champion in 1938 he possessed 3/8 titles available across the entire sport. Now the WBA has 42 champions across 17 weight divisions. This doesn’t include the WBC, WBO and IBF as well as lesser titles like the IBO. Boxing has evolved, not necessarily for the better but for quite sometime we have accepted 4 champions per division but the WBA are really starting to stretch the boundaries to unacceptable levels.
The three tier system
WBA Super Champion
WBA Regular Champion
WBA Interim Champion
Heavyweight division example
WBA Super Champion – Tyson Fury
WBA Regular Champion – Lucas Browne (Drug B-sample pending)
WBA Interim Champion – Luis Ortiz
The criteria
The inception of this idea goes back to the early 2000s. Originally it took an outstanding achievement to be labelled the WBA ‘super’ champion. In the early days a boxer could become a super champion for the following reasons.
– If a fighter had unified the division (e.g Won the WBA and WBC title simultaneously)
– If a fighter had defended his WBA regular title 5 times he would be elevated to Super
Current Super Champions
Tyson Fury
Sergey Kovalev
Felix Sturm
Gennady Golovkin
Adrien Broner
Takashi Uchiyama
Juan Carlos Payano
Juan Estrada
This criteria for a super champion seems to have gone completely put the window in recent times. There are now 8 super champions from 17 divisions and there looks like there will be more. The divisions that confuse me in particular are Super middleweight and Light Welterweight. The recent rematch between Fedor Chudinov and Felix Sturm was for the WBA super middleweight title vacated by Andre Ward. Chudinov is only a 15 fight novice and Sturm had fought once previously in the 168lb division drawing with Robert Stieglitz. After controversially winning the rematch German based Sturm is now the WBA super champion despite it being his first win at Super Middleweight. Giovanni De Carolis is the regular champion in this weight class.
Just as confusing is the announcement that Ricky Burns is fighting for the vacant 140lb title against Michelle Di Rocco. I have no idea at the process as to how this decision was made. Adrien Broner is/was the current WBA champion winning it at the back end of this year. He is due to make his first defence against Ashley Theophane in a couple of weeks. If Burns and Di Rocco are fighting for the regular 140lb title then Broner must be the Super champion. Why this is I have no idea. He has not even made one defence yet and is not a unified champion in this division. Just as surprising if not more so is that Ricky Burns is fighting for the title. Di Rocco is ranked #2 with the WBA and has campaigned at light welterweight his whole career but Burns is not even in the top 15. Ricky has had two fights at 140lbs. One against European level fighter Alexandre Lepelley in which he looked overweight laboring to an 8 round victory. The other was against Omar Figueroa which he lost a unanimous decision. So much like Sturm, Ricky Burns is 1-1 (0) in this division but he now fights for a world title that really should still belong to Broner.
Crazy publicity
There were even heavy rumors that the farce involving Roy Jones Jnr and Enzo Maccarinelli could have been for the WBA super Cruiserweight title but fortunately media and public outcry poured water on that one. If the WBA continue down this road they will without doubt become the weakest title to go for.
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