No Easy Answer as to Who is the Real Middleweight Champion

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Simple questions sometimes are responded to with unnecessarily complicated answers. Everyone is familiar with the tale of the guy who just wants to know what time it is and makes the mistake of asking someone who proceeds to give him detailed instructions on how to build a clock.

The boxing equivalent is this: Who is the middleweight champion of the world?

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There seemingly are more fighters holding some version of a “world” 160-pound championship than there are candidates vying for the Republican Presidential nomination. If there were a global public-opinion poll to ascertain the frontrunner for the top spot, Donald Trump-status likely would go to Kazakhstan’s Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs), who puts his WBA “super” championship on the line against IBF titlist David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) on Oct. 17 in Madison Square Garden. The rare unification bout, which will be televised via HBO Pay-Per-View, should help clear up a muddled situation at least a little, but not nearly as much as it should. See, Golovkin also is the WBC’s “interim” middleweight champ, a sort of shotgun rider to actual WBC ruler Miguel Cotto (40-4, 33 KOs), who defends that strap against former WBA/WBC super welterweight king Canelo Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) on Nov. 21 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, which also will be televised via HBO PPV.

Also in the panoramic middleweight championship picture are WBA “regular” titlist Daniel Jacobs (30-1, 27 KOs), who defends his somewhat diluted version of the prize against former WBO champ Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin (32-0-1, 23 KOs) on Dec. 5 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, a fight which will be televised by Showtime.

Circling somewhere around the perimeter is another holder of a supposedly major title, Irish southpaw Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs), whose next IBF defense, against England’s Billy Joe Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs), has twice been postponed because of, first, illness which befell the challenger, who later suffered a cut eye in training.

If all this makes you long for another time – like, say, Sept. 29, 2001, when Bernard Hopkins knocked out Felix Trinidad in the 12th round at Madison Square Garden to add the Puerto Rican superstar’s WBA belt to the IBF and WBC ones he already possessed – join the club. Hopkins went on to knock out Oscar De La Hoya in nine rounds on Sept. 18, 2004, to annex the Golden Boy’s WBO crown, making the ageless wonder from Philadelphia the last man to hold all four titles, or even three, at the same time.

The notion of another fighter gathering up all four alphabet championships, like a trick-or-treater filling a pillowcase with candy on Halloween, is probably less feasible than the leaders of Iran and Israel deciding to make nice, or for President Barack Obama to be named co-host of the Rush Limbaugh Show upon leaving office. The very concept of a world championship, indisputably genuine and accepted by everyone, is like Elvis. It left the building a long time ago.

Once upon a time, there were eight “traditional” weight classes and a single champion in each. It was simple, it was clean, it was as basic and easily understood as 2-plus-2, not mind-numbing quantum physics. But then the boxing universe shattered, like a dropped crystal vase onto an uncarpeted floor. The Panama-based WBA stepped up to claim its share of the shards in 1962, with the Mexico-based WBC following in 1963, the New Jersey-based IBF in 1983 and the Puerto Rico-based WBO in 1989. There have been some intermittent attempts by the squabbling parties to work together, but in the end each entity is more intent on protecting its own turf.

There are now 17 weight classes. With four widely recognized sanctioning bodies, that makes for 68 potential world champions – and that’s not even counting the WBA’s unconscionable subdivision of titles into “super” (unified) and “regular” categories. The unwieldy number climbs even higher when you factor in phony interim and emeritus designations.

Who’s to blame for this Gordian Knot that never seems to get untied? Maybe it’s the premium-television outlets, with the infighting between HBO and Showtime as contentious as that among the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO. Maybe it’s the false belief by all concerned that the public can’t possibly be interested in watching a fight unless some championship belt, even if it is manufactured or devalued, is at stake. Maybe it’s consumers who shrug and accept the status quo because they feel powerless to effect any real change. What’s the old saying? Oh, yeah. We have met the enemy and it is us.

And the rot is not merely at the top. Scan the top 10 middleweight ratings of the four widely recognized sanctioning bodies and it’s a grab-bag of confusion. Only one contender, Tureano Johnson –he’s ranked No. 3 by both the WBC and WBC, No. 4 by the IBF and No. 8 by the WBO – is listed by all four organizations. Japan’s Ryota Murata (who has logged all of seven bouts as a pro), holds ratings from the WBC, WBO and IBF, and Russia’s Arif Magomedov gets a nod from the WBC, WBA and WBO. Eleven other top 10 fighters are rated by just one sanctioning body.

There are some very good middleweights in the thin tier of elites – Golovkin’s 91-percent knockout percentage is the highest of 160-pound titlist in history – and Cotto is a surefire first-ballot inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, although his credentials were mostly accrued as a super welterweight, welterweight and super lightweight. Depending on how they do in upcoming title bouts, Lemieux and Alvarez have an opportunity to have their names enter the conversation.

But there is a lack of depth, or at least familiarity with American audiences, below the Golovkins and Cottos. Raise your hand if you know much, if anything, about such possible players in the division as Arif Magomedov, Avtandil Khurtsidze, Sergey Khomitskyl, Sergiy Derenyanchenko, Lajos Mark Nagy, Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam and Andrey Meryasen.

All of the aforementioned contenders are from points far removed from the U.S., which does not preclude them from being legitimate possible claimants to the various titles. Just because you might not have seen some of these guys doesn’t mean they can’t fight, and fight well. But all of them would be tough sells on American TV, and it would be necessary for their profiles to be significantly raised in this country before they could draw a Nielsen rating higher than a PBS special on Moroccan horticulture.

Maybe even more so than the heavyweights, the middleweight division has a rich and treasured history, with its championship ranks being graced by such all-timers as Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvin Hagler, Carlos Monzon, Stanley Ketchel, Harry Greb, Carmen Basilio, Roy Jones Jr., Tony Zale, Mickey Walker, Emile Griffith, Jake LaMotta and Hopkins, among others. Now that there are fewer quality middleweights, there are a glut of titles for those on the scene to vie for.

It would be great if there could be a real unification tournament, like the one Hopkins won in 2001, or something along the lines of the Showtime-televised Super Six World Boxing Classic, which brought together six championship or near-championship super middleweights in a series of bouts from 2009 to 2011. But even that noble experiment had its glitches, with original entrants Jermain Taylor and Andre Dirrell dropping out in mid-tournament and being replaced by substitutes Glen Johnson and Allan Green.

Until such a plan is conceived and made a reality, all of us are left to continue asking the question that deserves a definitive answer.

Just who is the middleweight champion of the world? Or, really, the champion in any weight class?

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.