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| Should fans start turning their backs on titles? |
There are many who disagree with me that titles have become useless - and with good reason. For in a financial sense, they are extremely valuable to the hardscrabble fighters who actually work their way up the ranks and earn them the old fashioned way these days. They also offer unknowns a terrific chance of getting exposure. That, too, is an excellent thing.
Still, the sanctioning bodies behind today's major titles have made such a mockery of the entire idea of championships that they've actually diminished the integrity of boxing - a sport which, less face it, has had integrity issues from it's inception. Titles signify nothing anymore other than a spotlight for individual fighters and a bargaining chip during negotiations.
They certainly no longer signify athletic achievement of the highest order. For if they did, there wouldn't be a snowball's chance in a sandbox that Robert Guerrero could become the WBC welterweight champion later this month when he battles Danny Garcia. Why? Because neither Danny Garcia nor Robert Guerrero have even come close to proving themselves to be the best welterweights in Al Haymon's stable, much less the entire welterweight division.
Guerrero, after all, hasn't looked dominant in at least a year. And Garcia? Well, he rarely faces a truly tough challenge and when he does (Lamont Peterson, for instance, or Mauricio Herrera) it seems like the judges have a bias in his favor. While neither man is a dud by any stretch of the imagination, neither man is solid gold, either.
Couldn't, one would ask, Keith Thurman face Amir Khan for the title? Or how about Shawn Porter, a former champion in his own right? Didn't Porter face better competition in his last bout than either Danny or Robert did? Clearly none of that matters. Why? Because titles have truly become ridiculous if they're to be viewed through any prism of sportsmanship.
And that's too bad.
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