The three men with claims to the title of world’s best heavyweight will each fight in the next month, but the 19-year wait for an undisputed champion presses on
Of the many well-documented reasons for boxing’s protracted retreat toward the periphery of the mainstream, the lack of clearly identifiable champions rates high on a competitive list. At one time the heavyweight championship of the world was the most prestigious title in sports, yet boxing’s lack of central authority has left us with four major sanctioning bodies that have served to create confusion among casual observers while devaluing the currency of a title.
Only five and a half months ago, the sport’s bellwether division appeared on the cusp of a new dawn when two of the big men with legitimate claims to the title of world’s best heavyweight fought to a white-knuckle split draw in downtown Los Angeles punctuated by a meme-friendly climax straight out of a Rocky movie. Deontay Wilder kept the WBC’s version of the long-fractured heavyweight title he’s owned since 2015. Tyson Fury retained his stake to the lineal championship he earned when he ended Wladimir Klitschko’s decade-long reign the same year. And Anthony Joshua, the Olympic gold medalist who’s consolidated the WBA, WBO and IBF belts to boffo box-office numbers, abruptly dropped from the most comfortably perched of the trio to, one could reasonably argue, the least.
Written by Bryan Armen Graham in New York
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/16/wilder-joshua-tyson-fury-fights-boxing under the title “Wilder, Joshua, Fury mark time amid lost heavyweight season”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
