Why don't we have unification tournaments?

Question

I would like to see attempts at unification across all weight classes in 2009 a tournament the pits the current title holders against their mandatory and then title holder against title holder until all titles in a division are unified. Titles I would invite would be the WBA, WBO, WBC and IBF. Opinions?

Answer 1

Yes i agree i only think a champion is a true champion is when he is undisputed

Answer 2

THere is a problem with that

Money, Promoters, Title Belt Rules, Fight Schedules, not enough time, just to name a few, oh and of course Money = )

Answer 3

We don't have them because of sanctioning bodies,promoters,purses would never agree enough for unifications across the board. The only good thing about having multiple champs is that ranked fighters get a chance at winning a part of the crown in that weight division. If you had one champ per divsion that would mean two things: one the champion has to work with 4 different sanctioning bodies so that he is not stripped of a belt, 2. a contender would have to wait a considerable amount of time before he gets his shot at a belt. I agree we really need one champ, but it would cost so much for a fighter. bacjk in the day when there was one champ alot of quality fighters didn't get a chance to fight for the belt because they were ranked like 8th and had to wait until everyone else lost in order to be recongnized. also that would mean the champ would be fighting at least 3 times a year which would make it hard for pay per view scheduling and the champ to actually make any real money

Answer 4

The reason is because the sanctioning bodies are all in it for themselves, they don't care about the fighter.  There are so many examples that illustrate this: Kelly Pavlik had to pay a $25000 sanctioning fee for his NONTITLE fight with Jermain Taylor. We also have "super" and "interim" champions in each division, for example: when someone unifies the WBA title with another, the WBA creates a "regular" champion and designates the unified champ as a "super" champion- that is one of the stupidist ideas in all of boxing.  The sanctioning bodies will do whatever they can to make the most money which is why there are all of these mandatory challengers that have not done anything to earn a shot at a title (Gary Lockett, Ray Austin, etc.)  I think that Max Kellerman put it best when he said that the sanctioning bodies don't have any authority to tell the people who the champion is.  The true champions are the ones who hold the lineal and Ring Magazine title.  Unless a fighter has the Ring belt, I will usually refer to him as a "titlist" because they have not defeated the real top contenders in their division to earn their "championship." Even if one were to unify their division, they would never be able to keep all of the titles because of all the worthless mandatories, which is why championship linearity is one of the most important things in boxing.  Back in the days of Louis, Marciano, Ali, there was only one champion and thats the way it should be.  I was happy that The Ring launched their championship policy in 2002 because since then, it has become easier for the fans to differentiate the true champions from the paper ones.  The Ring champions have earned the right to be called champ, and they will rightfully continue to be recognized as the true champions in their weight class.

Answer 5

sometimes money is the issue, other times it's to do with fighters being contracted to opposing tv networks and neither will step aside.

then other times it's because the fighters know who the best is  and avoid him.

Answer 6

there are unification fights which has been happening in the heavyweight division recently. as for the other weight divisions it would be great if this could happen. I would love to see more title unification fights.