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After the WBC “Diamond” belt, the “Platinum” belt can’t be far away

Phil D. Jay
WBN Editor

Fans pleas go unheard as organisations add more titles

With 90% of the fans, boxers and promoters that I speak to wanting just one world title for every weight division, the creation of the WBC “Diamond” belt, which Sergio Martinez and Bernard Hopkins have successfully claimed is another unwanted title to add to the majority of the rest.

Although it is just a one-off belt that the winner gets to keep, it is an unwelcome manufactured belt that just confuses fans and even some commentators, who don't know which title is real and which title is to be defended.

Add that to the WBC's original “Gold” belt and the "Silver" belt, along with the WBA’s new “super” title and “regular” titles, then we are looking at six or seven world champions in each division, which is not doing the fight game any favours in terms of credibility.

You ask anyone in boxing what they would like to change about boxing and nine out of ten would say “less titles” and that was when we only had four organisations that were recognised by most people in boxing, the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBA.

Slowly but surely though, it seems the IBO are now close to being considered a fifth and the WBU and WBF are still crowning world champions, so conceivably, we could have nine world champions in any one division at a time.

I think the only way to make the sport of boxing gain back some of the credibility that this controversy has robbed it of, is to dismantle some of these organisations and totally abolish any right that an organisation as big as the WBC or WBA, can have two levels of world champions at one time.

It slowly delving into a farcical situation that the WBC or WBA can elevate a champion to a “super” or diamond” status when a TV company rejects their mandatory challenger, which is basically why this happened in the first place.

The TV companies seem to have the power to reject, for example, Sebastian Zbik from a fight he earned with Sergio Martinez two years ago and to prevent Martinez from losing the title, they create the “diamond” belt to satisfy HBO.

I think the TV companies and the organisations need to sit down and talk about putting an end to the madness and get back to one, maybe two titles per division. If two organisations merged with each other it could bring back a little prestige to the world title and give everyone hope that we wont see any more “TV” world titles created.

Related article: When will the madness end?
http://www.worldboxingnews.net/2010/11/too-many-titles-age-old-debate.html

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