Face it Boxing World Mike Tyson Hijacked the Heavyweight Championship & The Heavyweight Division Has Gone Down Ever Since!

By Dave “Madcap” Mroczek

Since the bareknuckle days, the heavyweight championship has been passed down the same way, through the hands of one giant of the prize ring to the next. To be the man you had to beat the man. Obviously a few retired, and it was sorted out by facing the consensus number one and two challengers for the vacant title, and this carried on for decades. Nowadays there are several titles in each division, super and regular champions, interim and emeritus champions. There are diamond belts, international and intercontinental belts. Major and minor world titles. Basically a dog’s breakfast, a mug’s game, or an alphabet soup in modern boxing slang.

How did this come to be? It used to be so simple, there was one king atop a hill, and all challengers would try to knock him off the peak. Now fighters can get a hold of a piece of silverware and never again have to face anyone in the top fifteen, protecting their precious “world championship”. How did this all come about? What lead to such an unfortunate devolution of the sporting quality of boxing? Why, Don King of course. Could it be anyone else? This is the story of how Mike Tyson hijacked the heavyweight championship of the world, and forever changed boxing championships for the worse.

The history of championship belts began in England during the bareknuckle days. Lord Lonsdale would award the champion of England with a belt as a trophy. This was rather informal and was more of a gift from a rich patron rather than an official championship. The world championship was originally a title, as in a credential added to your name, the right to be called champion. The belt was just a momento of sorts. When John L. Sullivan became the first true world champion in the 1880s he was not awarded a belt until his fans chipped in and had one made several defenses later. There always seemed to be a belt involved, but no one payed it much mind, the championship was a title.

The Ring Magazine started awarding a belt to the lineal champion starting in 1922 with Jack Dempsey. In the late 1950s after a long reign by Joe Louis, as mobsters like Frankie Carbo began to control the game there emerged organizations whose sole purpose was to sanction championship fights, such as the NYSAC and the NBA (not the basketball league). They usually followed the lineal championship closely, and when they did not, it was clear who was the real champion and who was the paper champion. The NBA would go on to become the WBA, which would fracture in the 1970s and give birth to the WBC. It was around this time the belt organizations started charging sanctioning fees in order to fight for their titles. In the 1970s Muhammad Ali decided he would prefer to tout the WBC belt instead of the WBA belt. So he did. Everyone knew he was the real champion still, and Ken Norton was not. In the early 1980s, Larry Holmes had wrestled the lineal world championship from an ancient Muhammad Ali. Some time later he decided to give up his WBC strap in favor of a newly formed organization – The IBF. Everyone knew Holmes was still the champion. He had just changed belts. He ended up losing twice to Michael Spinks and this is when the hijacking began

There was a vicious young destroyer of men on the rise in the heavyweight division. Mike Tyson. A real fearsome killer. With the advent of pay per view, boxing was becoming big business and prospect Mike Tyson was the perfect star to send the sport into the stratosphere. One Problem. Michael Spinks wanted nothing to do with a challenge from Tyson for the time being.

Since Spinks only owned one of the belts, and there were several others out there in the heavyweight division, there were plenty of options for Tyson. First he defeated Trevor Berbick for the WBC belt. Everyone knew Berbick was not the true world champion, but they didn’t care. They wanted to see this new destroyer do his thing. He became an immediate public success; the whole world was in awe as they had been of Dempsey so long ago.

Next Tyson defeated James “Bonecrusher” Smith to gain the WBA belt. He was now able to be billed as a unified champion. Slowly the focus shifted to Tyson and away from Spinks, who was yet to be knocked off of his hill. Spinks was stripped of his belt by the IBF, which Tyson won from Tony Tucker. He was now being billed as the “undisputed” champion of the world. This of course was all part of a plan to market Tyson as the champion, and earn championship level money long before and without the formality of….actually having to win the world championship in the ring.

The plan worked. Tyson mania was at a fever pitch. Photos of him draped in belt after belt added legitimacy to his claims – and pay per view and ticket selling status. Mike Tyson was making more money boxing than anyone had previously thought possible. He was a massive world icon, and was widely regarded and feared as the champion of the world. People were so Enamoured with him that the fact of the matter was totally ignored. He had not beaten the man, who had beaten the man, who beat the man, who beat the great John L. Sullivan. The way it had always been done, and the way boxing championships had been defined. One man standing on a hilltop, and the others trying to knock him down.

In one of the great indignities of the prize ring, when Tyson and Spinks fought in 1988, Spinks carrying only his Ring Magazine belt and Tyson carrying an armful of alphabet belts, Michael Spinks was announced to the world as the challenger and Tyson was announced as the undisputed champion of the world. A great tradition that went back for centuries was tread upon – earning the right to be called champion. The world, and America, were so enamored with Tyson they were ready to ignore the fact that Spinks had defeated long time great champion Larry Holmes, who had defeated the great Muhammad Ali, and had not lost his status in the ring. The public was so eager for the new sensation; they never could have foreseen the long term damage they were actually doing to boxing as a sport.

Tyson, of course, would win the fight. Now nearly thirty years later the effects have been profound. That was the last semblance of respect for lineal championships at that time. The landscape is entirely different. There are numerous champions in each weight division. Nobody can clearly define what being the “real” champion is anymore, only that it is some combination of having one or more of the belts, for long enough that the public accepts them.

Belts are stripped, vacated and handed over without a care. Rankings are made seemingly without reason, and likely with the influence of money. George Foreman was given some credit for defeating Michael Moorer in 1996, who defeated Evander Holyfield, then was promptly ignored. Both Foreman and later Shannon Briggs had to suffer the indignity of being billed as challenger when in fact they were the historical champion of the world. Many others would be billed as champion who had a less than credible claim to any sort of throne.

All the belt organizations are making tons of money having all kinds of dubious championship fights. The only thing in common that the super, regular, interim, diamond, and emeritus champions have is that they paid a handsome fee to some backward operating sanctioning body. When there was one champion he could only duck for a year or two before he had to face the reality of a serious challenge, now there is a new problem with ducking. With so many belts the weight divisions become compartmentalized, allowing fighters to grab hold of a belt, then hold it hostage by never facing other belt holders, or worthy challengers. There is no desire to make the big fights when there is plenty of success to go around.

Belt organizations once justified their existence by forcing good matchups on occasion. In recent years it appears they cannot even handle this task anymore. Their focus has shifted to protecting their champions, allowing long strings of easy defenses plucked from senseless rankings. Underwhelming challengers are given mandatory status, and fighters are placed in the rankings conveniently so the champion never has to face anyone too difficult.

Unfortunately for fans and lovers of the sweet science this has become the reality of the sport since the Tyson era. Their desire to see the Tyson machine in full swing has led to thirty years of confusion and murkiness around championship boxing. The championships are multiplying and the mismatches are getting worse and worse. Die hard fans can see what is happening and lament it. Fair weather fans will continue to tune in, oblivious to why there are so many champions in each division. Can it go back to the way it was? Likely not. But as fans we control the money, and the respect, and can begin to wield that power against those who continue to damage our beloved sport.

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