Heavyweight champion max8/17/2023 ![]() ![]() Fury stayed idle for some 30 months and in that time two big names made their way to the top of division, Deontay Wilder and Anthony Joshua. The two most respected arbiters of championship lineage quickly diverged while the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board almost immediately declared their heavyweight championship vacant, The Ring took nearly a year to do the same. “I feel that it is only fair and right and for the good of boxing to keep the titles active and allow the other contenders to fight for the vacant belts that I proudly won and held as the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world.” Some regard Anthony Joshua as the real champion.Īnd then the confusion began. “I’m unable to defend at this time and I have taken the hard and emotional decision to now officially vacate my treasured world titles,” he had declared. This decision was the outcome of a struggle with alcohol, drugs, and depression following his upset win over Klitschko. In October of 2016, Tyson Fury surrendered his alphabet titles and his status as the true world heavyweight champion when he announced he was officially retiring. ![]() Fury was the legit king after he beat Wlad. Steelhammer” had established himself as the true ruler of the division, the rightful heir to the throne that had been left vacant when Lennox Lewis retired in 2004. Either way, it was universally agreed that “ Dr. Depending on one’s preferences, Klitschko either picked up the lineal title from Ruslan Chagaev in 2009, or from Alexander Povetkin in 2013. Klitschko, it should be mentioned, became the king of the heavyweights through attrition as much as from any single win. He gained that status with his upset win over Wladimir Klitschko in 2015. So, to be clear, Tyson Fury indeed was the lineal heavyweight champion. But at the same time it’s important to make sure we get it right before we proclaim someone to be a lineal champ or we defeat the whole purpose. Naturally it’s more satisfying to have an actual leader at the top of the division than just a bunch of contenders with belts circling an empty throne. The idea of lineal titles being more legitimate than those handed out by sanctioning bodies has gained some traction of late, and perhaps that has something to do with the fact that significant numbers of fight fans embraced Fury’s lineal claim. ![]() Each one extorts money from fighters for the honor of contending for their gaudy leather straps, and while winning one can be a boon to struggling boxers who are desperate for exposure and money, the proliferation of belts dilutes the meaning of the very term “world champion.” (And we won’t even go into all the nonsense of belts for “regular,” “gold,” “silver,” “youth” or “super” champions.) Boxing is flooded with so-called “world” titles. Four different sanctioning bodies currently receive widespread recognition and are all deemed “official,” whatever that means. One of boxing’s great flaws is the lack of uniformity around rankings and championships. It’s a claim I’ve seen parroted in the boxing media with increasing frequency as knowledgeable pundits refer to Tyson Fury as the “lineal champion.” And this is frustrating to me, because I have long been an enthusiastic advocate for recognizing lineal title-holders. The draw verdict was a disappointment but it allowed the Brit to hold on to a claim he had been making, and continues to make in earnest since his return to boxing in mid-2018, namely that he is the holder of the lineal heavyweight championship of the world. But despite Fury’s superiority in boxing skill, the match remained a taut and tense contest to the very end as Wilder scored a knockdown in round nine before “The Bronze Bomber” nearly decapitated “The Gypsy King” in the final three minutes, a stanza which was clearly 2018’s Round Of The Year. It was an exciting, sometimes sloppy, and highly dramatic match, which Fury, in the eyes of most, deserved to win as he flummoxed Wilder with his cartoonish, herky-jerky head movement and surprisingly nimble footwork. A few months ago we witnessed one of the more memorable heavyweight battles of recent years as alphabet titleholder and top-two contender Deontay Wilder faced off against the last man with a claim to the lineal heavyweight championship of the world, Tyson Fury. ![]()
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