By Chris Akers: There have been and still are many arguments as to what is wrong with the state of the sport known as the sweet science. From the facets of world title belts on offer to the best avoided the best (though admittedly that did change last year), boxing in the modern age has become a hybrid of controversy and scandals. One universal opinion that always crops up is that there are too many divisions in boxing today and that the landscape of the sport was exceedingly better when there were only eight divisions for the boxing media and public to remember.
Now one point that needs to be made before my overall opinion is expressed. Why, when people are on average heavier today, primarily due to the change in their diet and leading healthier lifestyles, do we have the Straw weight and Light Flyweight divisions (105 and 108 pounds respectively) when the Flyweight division (112lb weight limit) was the smallest division around a hundred years ago. Those are the only two weight divisions that should be removed.
As for the other weight limits that have been created over the last thirty years, if anything they have produced good fighters who would have struggled in divisions too heavy or too light for them. Alexis Arguello is an example of someone who, although a world champion at Featherweight, was better suited and at the peak of his career at a newly created weight class (Super Featherweight). Light Welterweight legend Antonio Cervantes is another example of this.
The earlier statement about people had been on average heavier now than they were hundred years ago; in particular is justification for the number of weight divisions that are around. At the start of the twentieth century, Britain was producing a conveyer belt of some of the greatest Flyweights in the world with boxers like Jimmy Wilde and Benny Lynch. Yet between 2000 and 2007, there was only one British Flyweight title fight. The British Boxing Board of Control acknowledged this by recognising and including the Super Flyweight division.
Not yet convinced? Let us look at greats Henry Armstrong and Sugar Ray Robinson. Armstrong fought most of world welterweight title defences under today’s light Welterweight limit and was overweighed by 11 pounds when he challenged Ceferino Garcia for the latter’s Middleweight title. Robinson on the other hand was only a Light Middleweight when he fought Jake La Motta for the Middleweight title, La Motta coming down from Light Heavyweight for most of his fights. As great as these fighters were, divisions in between the traditional weight class would have undoubtedly helped them before competing in the more marquee divisions of Welterweight and Middleweight at that time.
Who is to say that just because a weight class is one of the traditional eight that it is better than the other weight classes around? Flyweight, Bantamweight and Light Heavyweight have all produced great boxers, but how many great fights can you name from those weight classes, especially from the last twenty years? For each of those divisions, you can probably count on one hand the number of epic battles they have produced.
Counter that with the Super Bantamweight division, a weight class that did not exist until the 1970’s, that has produced three of this decades Ring magazine’s fights of the year.
One final point to leave everybody with. A reason given for the creation of more divisions is that it gives the alphabet boys more sanctioning fees to collect. This quote from the book The Great White Hopes (Written by Graeme Kent, Published by Sutton) might sure that it is not exactly a new practice:
‘The World Light Heavyweight Championship had rather fallen into abeyance with the retirement of Philadelphia Jack O’Brien. One day the manager of a fighter called Jack Dillon, who had knocked the gigantic Jim Coffey out of contention as a White Hope, was bemoaning the fact that his fighter was too light to secure lucrative bouts in the heavyweight class and that he needed a gimmick to attract promoters. Naturally, Dumb Dan took this as a professional challenge. He hired a couple of typists for a day and got them to write to every major sports writer in the country, announcing that Jack Dillon was now the Light Heavyweight champion of the world…….. The ploy worked. Dillon became universally recognised as the new Light Heavyweight champion. This boosted his standing and as a result he was able to secure lucrative bouts with Gunboat Smith and Fireman Jim Flynn, among others’.
If that is not using a traditional weight division to create financial gain, then I do not know what is.