By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford says he doesn’t think too much about the World Boxing Council’s move to suddenly create a new category called the ‘WBC Franchise’ title.
The WBC recently gave their ‘Franchise’ tag to lightweight champion Vasiliy Lomachenko and Saul Canelo Alvarez, and surprisingly, they accepted it. WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder is expected to be the next fighter given the Franchise tag to.
Crawford wants no part of WBC Franchise belt
“I don’t mess with no WBC ‘franchise’ belt, said Crawford when asked about his reaction to the World Boxing Council giving lightweight champion Lomachenko their Franchise tag. “I don’t mess with no WBA ‘regular’ belt or ‘super’ belt. There’s only one champion, one champion in the weight and that’s it. Ain’t no ‘franchise’, no ‘silver’, none of that. I only go by the actual champion,” said Crawford.
The problem with the WBC Franchise tag is the fact that it’s non-transferable, which means a champion can lose and he keeps the tag. Having a champion that can’t lose his title goes against the whole concept of sports. It’s surprising that fighters are willing to accept the Franchise tag by the WBC rather than telling the sanctioning body that they’re not interested.
Boxing’s belt systems has become a convoluted mess with there being a massive number of titles that are up for grabs. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the belts. Here’s a short list of the titles:
- WBC
- Interim WBC
- WBC Franchise
- WBC Silver
- WBC Diamond
- WBC Platinum
- WBA Super World
- WBA ‘regular’
- WBA Gold
- IBF
- IBF interim
- WBO
Crawford’s career hasn’t taken off as the WBO belt holder
Terence Crawford (35-0, 26 KOs) is seemingly isolated in holding down the WBO welterweight title. It might be a good idea for Crawford to vacate that strap, and get ranked with the IBF, WBA or WBC in order to try and face the popular fighters Errol Spence Jr. or Manny Pacquiao.
It’s obviously not working for Crawford in holding down the World Boxing Organization strap, is it? Crawford is 32-years-old, and has been fighting in the professional ranks for 11 years since 2008, and the biggest fight he’s had was against Yuriorkis Gamboa. That wasn’t a big fight. Crawford will next be defending his title against little known WBO mandatory Egidijus Kavaliauskas (21-0-1, 17 KOs) on December 14 on ESPN.
Casual boxing fans aren’t even talking about that fight. On the rare occasions that the hardcore fans mention the Crawford-Kavaliauskas fight, they ridicule it by pointing out that Crawford is taking another lesser opponent. Crawford would be better off vacating his WBO belt, and going after the WBA or IBF/WBC belts.
