If you want to see living proof of one of boxing’s biggest problems, you need look no further than the current state of the middleweight division.
Once considered a glamor division in the sport, the 160 lb. class is now bogged down in boxing politics with a plethora of bogus belt holders claiming world champion status.
The middleweight division currently features five world champions, a diamond champion, an interim champion, an international champion, and a silver titlist. None of these champions have faced one another and, other than some token talk from the usual suspects in the sanctioning bodies, there are no real, immediate plans for any champion vs. champion bouts in the near future.
An overabundance of title belts would be tolerable if the champions were actually defending their titles against quality opposition. More often than not, though, fans are “treated” to bogus title defenses against second or third tier opposition.
A perfect case in point was Saturday’s WBA middleweight title defense in the Ukraine when Gennady Golovkin crushed a hapless Makoto Fuchigama in three rounds.
One would legitimately wonder how Fuchigama, who has no wins of note and no fights outside of his native Japan, could qualify for a “world” title shot. But in a world where Golovkin can claim a world title without ever having beaten a top 10 middleweight, such questions would be pointless. Also pointless is the question of how Golovkin could be a world champion in the WBA when the organization already has a long-reigning world titlist in Germany’s Felix Sturm.
But Golovkin isn’t the only dubious middleweight champion. Among the five reigning world champs there are twenty-three total defenses, but only two have come against legitimate Top 10 middleweights at the time (Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Marco Antonio Rubio and Felix Sturm vs. Matthew Macklin).
Really, the lack of quality defenses makes sense since almost everyone in the middleweight Top Ten is holding some sort of world title. When champions won’t fight the other champions, all we’re going to get is a series of lukewarm defenses by questionable world champs against dubious contenders.
Meanwhile, the consensus top middleweight, Sergio Martinez, is carrying around a meaningless WBC diamond belt, given to him as an appeasement for being stripped of his WBC and WBO titles in 2010. With or without a belt, though, the true middleweight title lineage goes through Martinez and can be traced all the way back to the golden age of boxing. Still, his status as the true, lineal champ means little when trying to find a meaningful bout against one of the reigning world titlist. There’s simply no urgency to face a guy like Martinez when there’s plenty of money to be had fighting the Makoto Fuchigamis of the boxing world.
The current middleweight division is truly a sad state of affairs and a perfect example of how boxing politics and the short-term greed of its power brokers can completely handcuff an otherwise interesting division.
