This is Rummy's Corner.
Floyd Mayweather Jr was the greatest boxer of his generation, and indeed he is one of
the greatest boxers of all time.
Mayweather retired with a perfect professional record that included 50 victories, 0 defeats,
0 draws, and 27 of those 50 victories coming by way of knockout.
More impressive still, 26 of those 50 wins came in championship contests.
Mayweather's resume is simply extraordinary.
But despite all of those high profile championship victories, such as Diego Corrales, Oscar De
La Hoya, Sugar Shane Mosley, Miguel Cotto, Canelo Alvarez, and of course the decisive
win against fellow all time great Manny Pacquiao - despite this slew of high profile championship
victories, Mayweather was never the undisputed champion in any of these weight classes.
This is not meant as a criticism towards Floyd.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are too many belts, and with all of the political
bullshit involved among the big 4 sanctioning bodies, unifying all 4 titles is a very difficult
feat.
The inherent politics of the boxing business make it nearly impossible to become an undisputed
champion.
It's not impossible, but it's extremely rare and requires a type of perfect storm set of
circumstances to set the table for such logical match-ups.
Recent examples of boxers who have unified all 4 major belts of today - the IBF, WBO,
WBC, and WBA - include Oleksandr Usyk, who is the former undisputed cruiserweight world
champion, and Terence Crawford who is the former undisputed junior welterweight world
champion.
Make no mistake, it's impressive!
And Usyk and Crawford remain two of the most talented boxers in the world today.
But the fact that they each unified all 4 belts had as much to do with politics and
behind the scenes circumstances as it does anything else.
I'm not saying that Bud and Usyk aren't talented boxers.
They undoubtedly absolutely positively both are extremely talented.
But it has nothing to do with them becoming undisputed.
There was a certain element of luck involved that each of those two ever even got the opportunity
to compete for all 4 belts in a single fight.
Their talent earned them the respective victories that allowed them to become undisputed, but
politics and luck allowed them to compete for those titles in the first place.
In other words, just because guys like Crawford and Usyk were undisputed, doesn't mean they
were better than Floyd simply because he was never undisputed.
It simply means the politics worked in their favor just to get that type of extremely rare
opportunity.
Why are these opportunities so extremely rare?
The problem is there are too many damn belts!
It's ridiculous!
In a recent interview with Showtime, Mayweather himself duly noted, “This is not good for
the sport of boxing.
Now when a fighter fights, every fighter is a champion”.
BINGO!
That there is one of the biggest things wrong with boxing today.
There are too many sanctioning bodies, and each one of them has a history of shady underhanded
behavior.
These alphabet organizations have created a landscape where things are far too confusing
for the fans, and their shady behaviors have diluted the prestige that should come with
being a world champion.
Before I go any further, please note - all of the criticisms I'm about to make are not
directed at any boxers.
The boxers are just playing by the stupid rules created by these greedy sanctioning
bodies.
I'm not even going to criticize any promoters here in this episode.
All of these criticisms are directed squarely at the scheming ways of the alphabet bodies.
Now let's look at the recent lightweight championship unification bout as an example.
Teofimo Lopez was the IBF champion and he defeated the unified WBO/WBA champion Vasyl
Lomachenko.
At the end of the contest Lopez was awarded his new belts he had won from Lomachenko,
and holy shit!
Look at this!
Look at all those green WBC belts!
It's apparently a 2-for-1 special at the WBC!
They're giving out trinkets like whores turning tricks at a brothel on Uncle's Night!
And the craziest thing here, is that the WBC title wasn't even on the line in this fight!
Devin Haney is the real WBC champion!
It even says as much right on the WBC's amateurish looking website!
Again, this isn't meant as a criticism of Lomachenko, or Lopez, or Haney, or Usyk, or
Crawford, or any of the boxers I've mentioned or will mention.
These boxers are just following the bullshit “rules” of these alphabet knuckleheads,
and I use the word “rules” very loosely, because every one of these alphabet bodies
is in the habit of making up shit as they go along whenever it suits their own interests.
In other words, to line their own pockets!
Mayweather himself said as much in the aforementioned interview when he stated, “We gotta clean
the sport of boxing up.
This don't look good.”
Again, BINGO!
Money Mayweather is right on the money with his astute observations.
The sport is a staggering helluva mess, and the irresponsible alphabet bodies are to blame.
I mean I follow the sport pretty closely, and even I had no friggin' idea why the WBC
was giving out two green trinkets in a fight where the WBC title wasn't even on the line!
I knew one of them must have been the co-called “franchise” belt.
What a fancy name.
The “franchise” belt!
Apparently the WBC has already reversed course on this new scheme of theirs, because originally
it was reported that the WBC “franchise” belt was an honorary status that doesn't change
hands.
If you look at their amateurish website, as of the moment I'm reading this, the WBC still
hasn't actually updated the “franchise” champion.
And it has a bunch of missing information regarding Haney.
It's amateur hour at the WBC.
Look at that website!
It looks like something circa 1995 back when I was using Netscape Navigator!
Holy shit.
But I didn't even know what the hell that other WBC belt even was.
And I still don't know!
I'm not even going to bother looking up what it is, because I know whatever the hell they're
calling it, it's a big bunch of bullshit!
The only thing that surprises me here with the WBC is that it took them this long to
follow suit on the scam that the WBA has been pulling for years.
Of course, I'm referring to their so-called “super” champion.
That's right!
It's bad enough we have 4 sanctioning bodies, but the WBA thinks they;re so special they
have two belts!
As the late great Hall of Fame boxing trainer Emanuel Steward once said to me, and I'm paraphrasing
here, but he said something to the effect, “Super champion?
What's next, the super duper champion?”.
Mayweather himself in that recent interview also stated this.
“Ain't no such thing as a super champion.
You guys are just taking extra money from all these fighters, getting extra money from
sanctioning fees”.
Again, BINGO!
Money Mayweather dead on the money again!
That's all it's ever about for any of these sanctioning bodies.
They certainly don't care about boxing fans, and I have strong doubts that they care about
any of the boxers beyond their ability to help them line their own grubby pockets.
So the scheme with the WBA is basically this.
In some cases, they designate a unified champion as a “super” champion, and whenever they
have a “super” champion in one of their weight classes, then someone else can compete
for their “regular” WBA belt.
It's absurd!
It's preposterous!
It's ridiculous!
They're trying to create a situation where they can have two champions in every division.
But it's not every division.
Because some don't have a “super” champion in an effort to help the “regular” champion
keep its status.
But the truth is, all this scheme really did was devalue the “regular” WBA champion.
The “regular” WBA belt isn't a major championship belt.
It's the “super” WBA title that is their major world championship.
But in their greedy quest to line their pockets, the WBA successfully devalued its entire organization
when they invented this scam.
And if you look at the WBA website, holy shit!
It's every bit as amateurish as the WBC!
I guess they're saving every buck they can, and taking shortcuts on web design!
But look at this!
Look at this!
Not only do they have a “super” champion and a regular champion, they also have a gold
champion!
What the hell is that?
I mean I follow boxing and I have no idea what the fuck that even is.
You can't make this up!
And look at that!
The WBA hasn't updated their website either.
Amateur hour, I tell ya it's amateur hour!
The WBA and WBC are complete and total laughing stocks!
I guess at least the WBA website looks like it came out in this century.
Honestly, I'm not even sure why the WBA or WBC are even still considered major world
championships.
They SHOULDN'T be.
Again, this is NOT meant as a criticism of any boxers, they're just following the bullshit
rules these moronic sanctioning bodies make up as they go along.
In the name of fairness, let's look at the other two websites.
Here's the IBF, and yep!
Another amateurish looking website.
But at least the IBF actually updated their website.
And look at that!
The IBF hasn't updated their website either.
Teofimo already was their champion, but they still incorrectly have Lomachenko listed as
the WBO and WBA.
And here is the WBO.
Oh my goodness.
It's amateur hour across the board, ladies and gentlemen.
The WBO is another piss-poor presentation for a website in this day and age.
Get with the program.
It's 2020.
And another fail here, the WBO hasn't updated their primitive looking rankings either.
So none of these clowns even bothered updating their websites a full week later.
What a shit show!
Rank amateurs!
But the bigger point here is that there are too many belts, there are too many interim
belts and the likes, and in the case of the WBA and WBC - they think us fans are a bunch
of morons.
The scheme with the “super duper” belt and the “franchise” champion, they're
insulting our intelligence as boxing fans.
It's a total disaster.
Making matters even worse, as a general rule, these alphabet bodies usually tend not to
rank the champions of other organizations.
This is just sheer stupidity, and this is part of the reason that it's so rare for a
boxer to even get the opportunity to compete for the undisputed championship.
You would think these shady organizations would be in the habit of encouraging unification.
You would think that champions from other organizations should become the #1 mandatory
for the others, or at least be in a top position for such.
But no!
Instead of encouraging unification, they discourage it with these insulting tactics.
Except sometimes they don't!
There was a situation a few years back where Kovalev became the WBC mandatory for Adonis
Stevenson, at a time when Kovalev held all 3 belts from the other organizations.
Of course, even with this exception to the rule, that fight never came together.
But why the hell doesn't this happen all of the time?
And what the hell made it different then?
It's as if the WBC, WBA, WBO. and IBF are all like the 5 families from The Godfather
movie, where they have a silent agreement that basically says, hey!
We can all get our share if we steer clear of each other's business, except when it's
agreeable to further line our own pockets.
The whole thing is like a big disgusting racket.
And it isn't just sanctioning fees for championship fights.
I'm not expert, and please someone who knows more about the boxing business than me, please
correct me if I'm wrong.
But as I understood it, boxers who are ranked need to pay monthly fees just to keep their
place in the rankings.
How's that for a little perceived quid pro quo.
What does all of this mean?
It means that the biggest problems in the sport stem from the greed from these highly
unethical sanctioning bodies.
And I'm not even talking about all of the shady things each of these organizations have
undertaken throughout the years.
I'm just referring to their business as usual practices.
It's awful, and the boxers and boxing fans alike suffer from this mess.
With so many belts, it just adds to the status quo, where far too often, the best don't face
the best when it matters the most.
Making matters worse is the fact that there are way too many weight classes.
17 weight classes!
17 weight classes and counting, apparently.
The WBC is out of control!
Apparently the WBC is switching the cruiserweight limit back down from 200 to 190, the original
limit for one of the newer divisions in the sport.
The reason the WBC is doing this is because they want to create a new weight class.
It is effectively a super cruiserweight division, and it's an absolutely terrible idea.
We don't need more weight classes, we need fewer weight classes!
With so many belts and so many weight classes, this just helps create unnecessary obstacles
that the sport doesn't need.
It's another means to prevent the best from fighting the best when it matters most, and
it further devalues the status of what it should mean to be a world champion.
With fewer weight classes and fewer belts, by necessity, we'd get more big fights, and
not just championship fights.
Mayweather is right!
There are so many champions that it's killing the sport.
Fans don't know what to make of it.
At the very least these 4 shady pals need to get together and work together for the
good of the sport.
Start maybe by ranking champions in other organizations, a common sense solution that
right off the bat will help improve the health of the sport.
Encourage unification.
Encourage the best facing the best.
But in addition to wanting one champion per weight class, having less weight classes would
do a world of good, too.
And yet the complete halfwits over at the WBC are trying to add MORE belts and MORE
weight classes.
I say to hell with the WBC!
They can get bent.
In an ideal world, I think 9 weight classes would be perfect.
Revert back to the original 8, and keep cruiserweight at 200 pounds.
If we can narrow things down to 9 divisions with 1 champion per division, without all
the BS super duper franchise interim nonsense - we would have 9 world champions at any given
time.
That sounds damn good to me!
When Henry Amrstrong won world titles in 3 different weight classes, and amazingly he
actually once held all 3 of these titles simultaneously - Featherweight, Lightweight, and Welterweight
- it was unique!
And it was unique because it was extremely difficult to accomplish with one champion
and fewer divisions.
These days that sort of thing happens all the time.
A guy wins a belt, moves up, wins another, moves up and collects yet another.
The novelty of that distinction is now completely lost, and that's a damn shame!
Floyd Mayweather is a living legend.
He seemingly recognizes that this is a huge problem in professional boxing, and Mayweather
has the power and influence to help introduce change.
Maybe Mayweather can even team up with some of the other living legends of the sport,
and some other popular ex-boxers to start a campaign to put pressure on these shady
alphabet bodies.
Because one of the biggest problems is they aren't accountable for any of the stuff they
try and make up as they go along.
They need some type of accountability.
Maybe Floyd can start a campaign with his long time rival Manny Pacquiao, and maybe
these two can help implement positive change for the sport that resulted in them both becoming
living legends.
Hell, maybe Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, and Lennox Lewis can help promote this type
of change as well, as all of them know all too well about the scheming ways of these
organizations, and how the politics of boxing screws fans and aspiring boxing greats alike!
I'm done ranting.
That's all I really have to say about this.
But I sincerely do hope that a powerhouse personality like Floyd Mayweather Jr - a living
legend who understands the boxing business inside and out, who also understands how to
generate tremendous fan interest.
I hope Floyd uses his powers of persuasion to help genuinely try and clean up the sport
that so many of us love and cherish.
Boxing deserves better, the boxers deserve better, and boxing fans that make it all possible
definitely deserve better.
Thanks for watching everyone, I hope you enjoyed, and have a wonderful night.
This is Rummy's Corner.