WBA Stripping Pacquiao of its Title A Setback to Pro Boxing's Bid For One True World Champ at 147
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 04 Feb 2021
The recent unprecipitated move of the World Boxing Association (WBA) stripping Manny Pacquiao of his welterweight super title is another setback to the effort to realize one true world champion in the welterweight class and for each of professional boxing's now 17 weight divisions.
The effort was started by Nathaniel "Nat" Fleischer who founded and served for a long time as editor in chief of the Ring Magazine way back in 1922, nearly a century ago purposely with the aim to crown the legitimate lineal champion for boxing's then just eight original weight classes.
This was necessitated by the creation of the early beginnings of the so called boxing alphabet bodies as the National Boxing Association or NBA, forerunner of the WBA and rivalling state athletic commissions which recognized their own world champions and ranked sets of contenders.
The Ring bestowed its first lineal championships to Jack Dempsey (heavyweight) and Filipino Francisco Guilledo aka Pancho Villa (flyweight) following the lineage from the late 1880s pre gloved era of boxing.
Pro boxing has since evolved, growing to nine, then twelve to its present 17 weight classes attended by the increase and proliferation of so called world boxing sanctioning bodies, though only the WBA, WBC founded in 1962, IBF (1983) and WBO (1988) are recognized as major organizations internationally.
Nevertheless, this effort was doggedly pursued by Fleischer and his successors from that time, interrupted only in the 90s with the change of Ring Magazine ownership but revived in 2001 under the blue pencils of Nigel Collins and current editor in chief Douglass Fischer.
To date, the Ring has managed to crown the lineal champion in ten of the 17 weight divisions, namely: Tyson Fury (heavyweight), Mairis Breidis (cruiserweight), Canelo Alvarez (super middleweight and middleweight), Jermell Charlo (super welterweight ), Josh Taylor (super lightweight), Teofimo Lopez (lightweight), Naoya Inoue (bantamweight), Francisco Estrada (super flyweight) and Hiroto Kyoguchi (light flyweight).
That means only the light heavyweight, welterweight, super featherweight, featherweight, super bantamweight, flyweight and minimumweight divisions are still without lineal champions.
Since Floyd Mayweather, Jr retired in late 2015, the Ring has been looking for his rightful heir as lineal champion at welterweight. Floyd won that honor when he defeated Pacquiao in their bruited Battle of the Century richest fight in boxing history early the same year.
The long search was nearly ended last year when Bob Arum of Top Rank embarked on a project with financial support from Middle East sponsors to pit his ward WBO champion Terrence Crawford against WBA super titlist Pacquiao in a unification. That would have two of the Ring's top three fighters which would be enough for the Ring to sanction the fight as for its lineal belt also given that the other champion, WBC and IBF unified titlist Errol Spence has repeatedly turned down any fight versus Crawford.
But the Covid 19 pandemic torpedoed that fight from happening so everything is back to square one.
Arum has said that he is willing to re-negotiate that fight inasmuch as the sponsors from the Middle East have remained interested and waiting for the pandemic situation to become more manageable.
Spence for his part has remained keen on pursuing a fight versus Pacquiao though he said it is entirely up to the fighting Philippine Senator.
But WBA chose to be the fly in the ointment when it, without any prior notice, stripped Pacquiao of the super title he won in the ring by defeating erstwhile undefeated and division leader Keith Thurman in July 2019 and relegated him to the limbo as champion in recess.
Oddly, the WBA promoted its regular champion Cuban Yordenis Ugas who has not fought and beaten anybody of note (save for Shawn Porter to whom he lost a disputed verdict), as its new super champion in lieu of Pacquiao.
That effectively threw a monkey wrench on any unification fight between Pacquiao versus either Crawford or Spence.
For champion in recess is not a title that can be used in a unification, even less than the WBA regular title worn by China's Can Xu that disqualified him in a featherweight unification fight with IBF titlist Josh Warrington albeit the Ring announcing that it is willing to recognize the winner as lineal champion as Warrington is its #1.
However, Pacquiao remains top three in the Ring divisional ranking and that qualifies him to fight for the lineal title against either Crawford or Spence, if he so desires.
As soon as Pacquiao was stripped, the Premier Boxing Champions and Errol Spence announced that they are interested to a fight with Ugas. Could it be that the PBC was also on the fix?
However, it is doubtful if the Ring will approve of a Spence versus Ugas unification fight as for its lineal title since Ugas is only rated #6 as of its last divisional ranking behind Thurman and Porter.
Hence, the Ring will continue without a lineal champion at welterweight.
Until Pacquiao, Crawford and Spence agree to fight one or the other.
When will that happen is anybody's guess at this point.
For information, aside from Pancho Villa, eight other Filipino fighters have been recognized by the Ring as lineal world champions namely: Flash Elorde and Ben Villaflor (super featherweight), Dado Marino, Erbito Salavarria, Frank Cedeno and Sonny Boy Jaro (flyweight), Nonito Donaire (super bantamweight) and Manny Pacquiao (featherweight, super featherweight and super lightweight).
Pacquiao will actually be aiming for his fourth lineal world championship at welterweight, another world record high for him if he wins.
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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