Gennady Golovkin’s pay-per-view debut was a major success. He took apart David Lemieux in 8 rounds in front of 20,568 fans at Madison Square Garden to successfully defend his WBA middleweight championship belt, and take away the IBF belt Lemieux had possessed heading into the contest. It was Golovkin’s first unification bout since he became the WBA’s “Super” middleweight champion in 2014, and in his post-fight interview he said he wanted “all the belts!” and showed off the other belts he also owns (interim WBC and IBO). In other words, he wants to be the undisputed middleweight champion. How is “undisputed champion” defined?
For those who aren’t keen followers of boxing on a regular basis, there are four major sanctioning organizations: WBA, WBO, IBF, and WBC. If you are the simultaneous beltholder for WBA/WBO/IBF/WBC, you’re declared the “undisputed champion.” The WBO, which along with the IBF was formed in the 1980s, wasn’t part of this grouping until 2007, but the premise of having all the major belts has stayed the same. Minor belts such as NABF, IBO, IBC, etc. aren’t meaningful at the highest levels of the sport. Who are some past undisputed champions?
The last man to become undisputed 160 lbs champion AND successfully defend his belts at least once is Bernard Hopkins way back in 2001. Already the longtime IBF champion, Hopkins took part in a four-man tournament with WBC champion Keith Holmes, WBA champion William Joppy, and Felix Trinidad, who’d been a welterweight and super welterweight force. B-Hop beat Holmes to capture the WBC belt, then knocked out Trinidad for the WBA belt. Hopkins would go on to defend his status 6 consecutive times, including knocking out Oscar De La Hoya for the WBO crown in 2004, before a surprise loss to Jermain Taylor in 2005 ended his reign. Taylor never defended the IBF belt after he chose a Hopkins rematch instead of his mandatory defense vs. Arthur Abraham, so he was stripped of that title.
Marvelous Marvin Hagler is the most successful undisputed champion in middleweight history, having defended the WBA/WBC (and later IBF) belts 12 times consecutively before he was stripped of the WBA and IBF belts for fighting Sugar Ray Leonard instead of their respective top challengers. Leonard beat Hagler anyway, and he never fought again. Before him, Argentine legend Carlos Monzon possessed the WBA/WBC titles from 1970 until his retirement in 1977, never relinquishing his titles to someone else. So how can Golovkin join the ranks of the undisputed?
Golovkin’s already halfway towards unifying all of the belts, with just the WBO and WBC left to snag. In all likelihood, Golovkin will fight IBF #1 contender Tureano Johnson in early 2016 just to get that slaughter out of the way, and then fight twice more after that.
WBC – Winner of Miguel Cotto (c) vs. Canelo Alvarez (November 21st)
