Too Many Titles, No Real Champ

A Commentary by Scott Crouse

In the movie "Braveheart," William Wallace entreats a reluctant Robert the Bruce to join him with these words: "Your title gives you right to the throne of Scotland, but men don't follow titles, they follow courage."

As much as that might have applied to the quest for leadership in 13th-century Scotland, it applies as much today in the sport of boxing, which is chock full of titles but essentially leaderless and running out of true followers.

Boxing fans, frustrated with too many titles and too few recognizable stars, are tuning out and turning away. The courage that Wallace spoke of is still plentiful and unequaled in any other sport. The problem is that it's just spread too thinly among a plethora of titles and champions.

The exponential increase of titles and title-holders -- created by the various sanctioning bodies like the WBA, WBC and IBF -- is suffocating the sport by generating a prevailing attitude of confusion and indifference among fans. These organizations have almost single-handedly destroyed the sport with their corruption and greed, coupled with their propensity for the insanely stupid. They care about pleasing the fans about as much as the IRS cares about customer satisfaction. Clearly, the most destructive influence they have had, as far as fan disinterest, has been to minimize championship merit by maximizing championship status by awarding far too many fighters a little trinket they call a championship belt.

With more titles than shamrocks on St. Patrick's Day, fans have become confused, detached, and worst of all apathetic to the sweet science. Almost every other sport has an identifiable champion or leader, someone universally recognized as the best. But in boxing asking the question "Who's the champ?" is as absurd as visiting the Playboy mansion and asking "Who's the blonde?"

At the end of the season there is only one MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL champion. Only one champion is crowned in the Boston Marathon, Kentucky Derby, Tour de France, Bassmaster Classic, or Westminster Dog Show. You don't have multiple champions at Wimbledon, Daytona, or Augusta. There aren't multiple winners on American Idol or Survivor. Fans of any sport or competition simply want someone to stand out and rise above the rest; someone they can identify as the best and call the champ.

Consider that in January, 1957, there was a modest total of only eight world champions, from heavyweight to flyweight. By January, 1977, the number of world champions had increased to 20. This was mostly due to the advent of the World Boxing Council in 1963 which, combined with the World Boxing Association (formerly the National Boxing Association until changing its name and global focus in 1962), now created two champions in most divisions. However, as recently as January, 2007, with the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organization long since added to this alphabetical quagmire there was a mind-numbing total of sixty-two individuals recognized as world champions!

In the past, like the aforementioned 1957, everyone knew who the middleweight or lightweight champion of the world was. Today, even the most dedicated fans are hard-pressed to name every titleholder in a given weight division. Until recently, the heavyweight champion of the world was one of the most recognizable athletes on the planet. Today, one of the heavyweight titleholders could be standing next to you and he would be about as recognizable as last year's final pick in the NFL draft.

Owning a title has become like owning a Hummer -- it used to be special, but now that everyone has one, who cares? The irrelevance of world titles can be demonstrated by considering this:

Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley, Ricky Hatton, and Manny Pacquiao --four of the biggest names in boxing -- do not own world titles. Now consider that Silvio Branco, Malcolm Klassen, Zsolt Erdei, and Souleymane Mbaye do own world titles.

No wonder boxing is more screwed up than Britney Spears.

The resultant mess from world titles multiplying faster than chipmunks in springtime is apparent. It begins by diluting the talent pool within each division. If there are four world champions who represent four sanctioning bodies, then there are four sets of ratings with four sets of contenders. This creates too many "contenders" and significantly diminishes the talent within each division.
This contender-crisis creates undeserving challengers for one of these titles. Fighters who otherwise might never make it into a legitimate top ten are given number one status by a particular alphabet organization and a shot at their title (paying exorbitant sanctioning fees to these organizations doesn't hurt either).

Titles are then won by unknown and undeserving fighters. This is to take nothing away from the fighters themselves, but this situation allows fighters who might never have even been ranked otherwise to win titles. It also makes more likely the potential for mismatches and non-competitive fights.

This ultimately leads to a major identity crisis among boxing's lengthy list of world champions. After all, when there are 62 world champions, how can even the most hardcore fan know who they are? One is more likely to know the names of the Lighting Director and Key Grip in "Rocky V" than the names of the four heavyweight titleholders.

Winning a world title is supposed to be special. It is supposed to distinguish between the elite and the non-elite. It is supposed to set one apart from the others as the very best. But when everyone owns a title, then who can legitimately claim to be the best? And the sad reality is if everyone is a world champion, then no one is a world champion.

Boxing as a sport, if nothing else, is a survivor. It has survived its share of scandals and scoundrels, riots and racism, mobsters and mismatches, fixes and Fan-Man. But right now the greatest enemy to its survival is the fact that it has 62 individuals who call themselves world champion -- the best.

Let's not kid ourselves. Boxing, in one form or another, has been around since people were drawing pictures of woolly mammoths on cave walls and getting their boxing news on stone tablets. It's really not a matter of whether it will survive, but whether it can thrive.

For boxing to capture the attention of audiences as it once did, and garner the type of devotion it used to, it needs to give fans identifiable heroes. A champion needs to be someone who has earned the right to be called the very best, not just someone who owns a title.

After all, men don't follow titles.