The WBA and The Decreasing Value Of A World Championship

By Travis Fleming

One of the main reasons for boxing’s decline in the mainstream is the number of fighters who claim world championships in each weight class. With 4 major belts up for grabs in 17 different divisions, it’s difficult to ascertain who is the king of each weight class. Even the most hardcore fans have trouble crowning the top man at many weights. Having 4 champions per division has cheapened the sport and allowed for fighters to claim world champion without notching champion caliber victories. It has also allowed fighters to avoid challenges because they aren’t required to travel a risky path to line up a shot at one of the many of the titles up for grabs. This also hurts fighter development because if a fighter has a good promoter, it is no longer necessary to go through those ever important learning fights against tough opposition on the way up. We’ve see it time and again where a fighter gets a world title handed to them on a platter only to suffer a horrific beating when they finally face a top opponent because they weren’t given the quality of opposition necessary to allow them to learn and develop. All in all with 1 WBC, 1 WBA, 1 IBF and 1 WBO champion in each weight class, there can be as many as 68 different fighters calling themselves world champions. It gets worse…..

I remember scratching my head last August when I heard that Daniel Jacobs was fighting for the WBA world Middleweight championship and it wasn’t against WBA world Middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. Golovkin didn’t vacate or get injured yet somehow Jacobs got the chance to call himself champion in the same division with the same sanctioning body by fighting Jarrod Fletcher who had done nothing to prove he was even a world class fighter. Jacobs easily disposed of the over matched Fletcher as expected to become the second WBA champ at Middleweight. This was because the WBA elevates their initial champion to “super champion” when they have unified with one of the other 3 major belts or have defended their WBA title a total of 5 times. Once a fighter has become super champion, the WBA put their regular title up for grabs in a match for the “vacant” title between a pair of highly ranked fighters (debatable in many cases including Jarrod Fletcher). Jacobs hasn’t fought since and is supposed to be forced to fight super champion Gennady Golovkin but will likely be allowed to defend his title against much easier opposition.

Fast forward to last month and it gets even more confusing. Son of a legend, Chris Eubank Jr, would defeat Dmitry Chudinov in an absolutely farcical WBA world championship fight to crown the third WBA world Middleweight champ! This was for the WBA’s interim title. The interim champ is supposed to fight the regular champ but somehow, prior to losing to Eubank Jr, Chudinov held the interim title through 3 fights without having to face a regular or super champ. Chudinov is hardly a top 25 Middleweight and had beaten nobody of note making his title pretty worthless to begin with. To further devalue the WBA Middleweight interim championship, Chris Eubank Jr got his shot at Chudinov after losing convincingly to Billy Joe Saunders. So now the WBA has 3 champions at Middleweight and 2 of them are not even among the top 10 middleweights in the world! The interim title is supposed be there in the case that a champion of a particular weight class is temporarily unable to defend his championship because of medical, legal, or other reasons that are beyond the champion’s control. When the champ returns, the interim champ is supposed to face him. While Chudinov held the interim title, both Jacobs and GGG were in perfect health and had no recent period of inactivity preventing them from defending their titles so for the WBA even having an interim champion made absolutely no sense by their own rules.

So why does the WBA do this? To quote the great Notorious B.I.G. on the anniversary of his death, “it’s all about the benjamins”. Simple and plain, they do it for monetary reward in the form of sanctioning fees. By having 3 champs in a division they are getting 3 times the sanctioning fees. It’s crooked, adding further confusion and devaluing the once prestigious title of world boxing champion. Conceivably, the WBA could have a total of 51 champions from Straw weight to Heavyweight, combine that with 51 champions throughout all 17 weight classes from the other 3 major sanctioning bodies and that means there could be 102 fighters walking around calling themselves champion of the world. They may as well just hand belts to anyone who appears to be a good fighter.

Gone are the days of one champion per division and they’re not coming back. It was bad enough when the IBF and WBO got added to the mix but now with what the WBA has been up to it’s gotten worse. This whole business of elevating someone to the corny title of “super champ” to free up the regular belt is garbage. What’s next? When a super champion defends 10 times are they going to create another belt and elevate him to “super duper fantastic amazing king champion”? There are already too many major sanctioning bodies and too many weight classes within mere pounds of each other, let’s not allow the WBA to further denigrate the sport. We can do this by refusing to acknowledge anyone but their super champs who are really just regular champs and the only ones there should be.

Personally, I like to recognize the Lineal or Ring champion. The man who beat the man who beat the man, so to speak. Unfortunately, that can prove problematic at times as well when someone beats the man then avoids the best contenders such as Miguel Cotto with the Lineal Middleweight championship after dethroning Sergio Martinez.
Just to give my fellow boxing fans a bit more insight into the crookedness of the WBA, here are some fighters who are undeservingly holding a WBA title:
– Ruslan Chagaev at Heavyweight. Even though he got whooped by super champ Klitschko. He won it by beating old man Fres Oquendo. Chagaev isn’t even a top 20 heavyweight anymore and Fres might not even be top 50.

– Youri Kalenga at Cruiserweight. Beat barely top 30 cruiserweight Denton Daley in a sloppy affair. Denis Lebedev was fully capable of defending his WBA regular title.
– Juergen Braehmer at Light Heavyweight while super champ Sergey Kovalev is perfectly healthy and active.

– Fedor Chudinov at Super Middleweight. Andre Ward was inactive so it makes sense to have a temporary champ but that champ should be Carl Froch who holds the regular WBA belt so no need for another.

– Daniel Jacobs and Chris Eubank Jr. at Middleweight for reasons explained earlier in this article.

– Jessie Vargas and Jose Benavidez at Junior Welterweight while super champ Danny Garcia is completely healthy and capable of defending. Benavidez was awarded the belt in a fight he clearly lost to Mauricio Herrera. Jessie Vargas is barely top 10 in the division and I’d struggle to put Benavidez in the top 20.

– Darleys Perez at lightweight while regular champ Richar Abril is totally able to defend. Perez is not even a top 15 lightweight.

– Scott Quigg and Oscar Escandon at Super bantamweight while super champ Guillermo Rigondeaux is healthy and able to defend. Escandon won his title by last years robbery of the year against Tyson Cave who seemed to win 11 of 12 rounds.

– From Straw weight to Bantamweight there are another 6 undeserving WBA belt holders including a Thai fighter by the name of Knockout CP Freshmart (seriously what his name has been changed to) who has only fought 10 times.

Going down the list, it’s clear as day that the WBA have lost all credibility and that they’re getting away with robbery. It’s a shame that promoters and managers are willing to put up these sanctioning fees in order to gain more leverage for their fighters through a cheapened world championship, but it’s an even bigger shame that the WBA have created this reality by unnecessarily inventing more belts that they can use leech off of.