The WBA has so many World champions

The World governing bodies rightly get some abuse from boxing fans. With the plethora of World titles available now it is no wonder that the casual sports fan would be hard pushed to name three World champions out of the sixty odd.

The WBC has a silver World title belt now which is supposed to be for fighters who are lined up to fight the recognised World champ at the weight, while the WBA now has an interim World champion at most weights, with the idea originally being to award the interim belt to the winner of a bout between the two top contenders in a division where the champion was injured or out of action for a while.

However this seemingly good idea has just been wasted with an interim champion at most weights now , possibly just because of the money that the WBA receive in sanctioning fees for these “World title bouts”. Add in to this the fact that the WBA also has “Super World” champions in divisions where the titlist has held the belt for a considerable period of time or has partly unified other belts and we end up with a farcial situation.

Well the WBA has seemingly surpassed themselves this time. Felix Sturm 34-2-1 (14)  who won at the weekend is the current WBA “Super World” champion at middleweight. Unbeaten Gennady Golovkin 19-0 (16)  from Kazakhstan is the “interim” champion. So Golovkin gets a shot at Sturm?

No that is a daft idea according to the WBA. Instead they are rumoured to be making a match between number two contender Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam 24-0 (17) and number three ranked contender Avtandil Khurtsidze 22-1-2 (13) for the standard WBA middleweight belt. Confused? Yes, so am I. Surely if the WBA want to have a regular champion then just appoint Golovkin as the champion.

The rumours also persist that Golovkins management team will seek legal action if this bout takes place for the regular title. Now I am no fan of fighters seeking court action but in this case I can see where Golovkins team are coming from.

No wonder why the MMA scene that regular pits the top fighters against each other is building up steam when even hardcore boxing fans like myself struggle to name all of the current World champions in our sport.

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