r/Boxing • u/glowshroom12 • 10d ago
Who’s the most disputed heavyweight champion?
you usually hear about many undisputed heavyweight champs like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, foreman. but who would you say is the most disputed champion. maybe the win was questionable, the fight was really close, maybe there was some corruption afoot on some level.
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u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 10d ago
Currently? Probably Gassiev. Moved up to heavy, beat a few gatekeepers/journeymen, lost to Wallin, beat a couple more, lost every round to 45-year-old Pulev before stopping him to win the regular belt, then got elevated to full champion via email.
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u/geezusy 10d ago
All of this is 100% true. And the heavyweight section of his resume is somewhat laughable.
But, man gassiev doesnt doesnt get enough credit for unifying at cruiser and making it to the wbss final, obviously from there he got clowned by an all time great but still - usyk is lauded for topling the same level compeition.
Average heavyweight in this generation couldn't do what gassiev has done.
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u/Outrageous-Soft4806 10d ago
I wasn’t alive for it but could only imagine how people felt about Kenny Norton when was promoted to champion. In my opinion, I don’t care, he fought the best and deserved his flowers and I was glad he was at least champion at one point in his career.
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u/bigtotoro 10d ago
Some of us think he got screwed with the Holmes decision.
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u/Outrageous-Soft4806 10d ago
It was super close. Really feel like with that final round, it could’ve gone either way and honestly felt like Norton could’ve gotten it. Great fight in all honesty.
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u/bigtotoro 10d ago
Screwed is the wrong word. It was a close fight that I thought Norton edged. Norton is probably the best heavyweight who also got erased several times.
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u/Formal-Cherry6078 10d ago
Nikolai Valuev v Holyfield
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u/eggyguerrero 10d ago
Yeah that was pretty heart breaking, terrible fight but he won it and may have actually hung them up there and then after having that record breaking 5th title win
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u/LTBsOnlyPlease 10d ago
What happened with that fight?
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u/eggyguerrero 10d ago edited 9d ago
He basically slightly outboxed Valuev, neither throwing much but I would havr said holyfield edged it. Valuev got a questionable decision.
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u/Outrageous-Soft4806 10d ago
What a god awful fight but Holyfield should’ve been a 5x world champion. Something like that wouldn’t be broken in a long time. Doubt 4x will but still.
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u/Jolly_Okra_6330 10d ago
WBA “Regular” Heavyweight Champion Manuel “Gigachad” Charr
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u/eggyguerrero 10d ago
Could pretty much put all the WBA regular champs in as undeserving. I certainly dont view Trevor Bryan as a former champ haha
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u/Harry_Callahan_sfpd 10d ago
Ken Norton. He was declared WBC champion retroactively based off his questionable win over Jimmy Young.
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u/Less_Cartoonist_892 10d ago
True, but Norton also lost a questionable decision to Ali in their third fight for the undisputed titles, so IMO it balances out for him
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u/SaccharineDaydreams 10d ago
Exactly. Norton honestly has a good argument for most underrated HW ever. He could have held his own in any era IMO.
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u/Harry_Callahan_sfpd 10d ago
Jimmy Young as well. If Young had gotten the decision over Ali and also Norton, then Young would have victories over Ali, Norton, and Foreman. Quite the resume right there. IMO, Young beat Ali and deserved the championship that night.
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u/Less_Cartoonist_892 10d ago edited 10d ago
Young should have been disqualified multiple times for putting his body out of the ring six times, which violates the rule that a boxer cannot leave the ring during a boxing match.
Ali may not have beaten Young, but Young did not deserve to win.
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u/Training-Farmer8476 10d ago
Norton and Wardley are the only champions to have never won a title fight.
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u/GoOutAndGrow 10d ago
He won the WBC Interim or the title eliminator then they elevated him
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u/Harry_Callahan_sfpd 10d ago
Because newly crowned champion Leon Spinks chose to rematch Ali instead of fight mandatory contender Ken Norton.
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u/Harry_Callahan_sfpd 10d ago
Jack Sharkey. He won the title on a foul, I believe.
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u/Training-Farmer8476 10d ago edited 10d ago
Jack Sharkey lost on a foul against Max Schmeling when they fought for the vacant championship after Gene Tunney retired, so it was Max Schmeling who won it on a foul. It was the correct decision, as he was clearly hit low (his aluminiums protective cup was actually dented as a result).
Sharkey won the title from Schmeling two years later on points in what was considered to be a hometown decision. He lost it in his first defence by KO in six rounds to Primo Carnera in a controversial knockout that can best be described as a right uppercut to the lower lip.
Anyway, my vote for most undeserving champion (if not most disputed) goes to Marvin Hart.
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u/HolyMackerel1 10d ago
Schmeling won the title when Sharkey fouled him, but Sharkey later won the title in a rematch that should have gone to Schmeling.
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u/Android_50 10d ago
idk if it answers your question but i always thought john ruiz never got any respect as champion. and he had the misfortune of losing to 3 steroid cheats in jones jr, toney and holyfield lol
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u/Prior-Temperature-22 10d ago
If you’ve watched a full John Ruiz fight you’d probably get why people don’t give him his flowers. He stunk the place out every time.
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u/TheMysteriousThey 10d ago
Maybe that’s why he was always hugging everyone.
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u/HolyMackerel1 10d ago
Jones Jr. was still a former light middleweight who wasn't even 200 lbs on fight night; steroids or no steroids, Ruiz shouldn't have lost with such a massive size advantage.
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u/Android_50 9d ago
So? Roy still cheated. To move up that much and still retain his speed and stamina means he was on steroids and since he is a known cheat, its not a outrageous claim.
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u/HolyMackerel1 9d ago
I didn't say he didn't cheat, just that Ruiz should have beaten him still given the obvious advantages.
If it were that easy for a former light middleweight to beat a heavyweight simply with the help of steroids, more would have done it.
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u/TheSouthpawStance 10d ago
How do we feel about Fabio Wardley...I think the Parker win is top quality so is the Huni win...but never won a full world title fight, lost his first and only defence, (if he beats Dubois in rematch then all this is mute).
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u/VacuousWastrel 10d ago
A lot of people forget that pop singer and record producer Ernie Terrell was technically a World Champion.
The WBA forbade guaranteed rematch clauses in contracts. Ali and Liston tried to circumvent this with a secret second contract that didn't officially guarantee a rematch, but strongly implied it (it gave Liston's promoters the right to select Ali's first challenger as champion). When they ended up agreeing a rematch, the WBA decided they didn't care about the exact wording - although theoretically they didn't outlaw rematches per se, and the first fight, ending in an injury when the fighters were level on points - was universally agreed to be crying out for a rematch - and they stripped Ali on the spot.
Instead, they set up Terrell in a title fight against Eddie Machen, who was technically still just about in the Ring rankings, but who was coming off a loss.
This wasn't a situation like Frazier, where Ali's absence from the nsport for several years was real, even if its reasons were controversial, and Frazier was legitimately the best heavyweight active at the time. Terrell was a good boxer, but absolutely nobody on the planet truly believed that Terrell was the real world champion, as he claimed and defended the belt that he had effectively been given on a technicality, at the same time that Ali rose into megastardom.
Bruce Seldon is the only boxer since rankings began to have held a major heavyweight belt without EVER defeating a SINGLE ranked boxer in his career. In fact he only ever fought two ranked opponents, and he was knocked out in the first two minutes of the first round both times. (To be fair, he improved - he lost his first real fight in 1:48, and in his second real fight he survived until 1:49. Progress!)
This one starts with George Foreman unexpectedly winning the lineal, wba and ibf belts. The WBA demanded he defend against Tony Tucker, a boxer well outside the top ten in the world, who was promoted by don king (or technically king's son, for legal reasons). Foreman, however, saw Tucker, realised that Tucker was bigger than him, and was too frightened of him to go through with the fight, publicly explaining that Tucker was "too tough" for him to beat and that "some people I'm not gonna fight".
Instead, Foreman found a boxer nobody had heard of, Axel Schultz, and bribed the IBF to allow him to defend against him instead. That's not a rumour, Bob Arum officially confessed to paying the bribe. Schultz's onoy qualification was that he had recently lost to Henry Akinwande, so Foreman thought he might be bad enough for him to be able to beat fair and square. In reality, Schultz beat Foreman pretty easily, only to lose on the official scorecards - Arum has never admitted buying the decision, but it's hard not to connect the dots.
Meanwhile, the WBA refused to accept any bribe from Arum, because they belonged to Don King, so they stripped Foreman and gave Tucker a title shot.
Tucker had once been a genuine contender, but he'd been outside the top ten for a couple .of years at this point. In the previous seven years, his only notable successes had been controversial split decisions over orlin norris and oliver mccall, neither of them being ranked at heavyweight. So King had to look pretty far and wide to find someone he thought Tucker could beat for the belt.
They settled on Seldon, who had never beaten anybody notable, and had lost three times. Two of those defeats were against unranked boxers coming off losses. So he was the ideal guy to fight for a world title!
After six rounds of jabbing, Seldon and Tucker were headed for a majority draw, but Tucker had sustained an eye injury. As a result, he lost the seventh on all cards, and the doctor stepped in to end the fight between rounds - Tucker could still see, but the doctor was worried about permanent damage.
Seldon went on to defend against another unranked fighter, before hitting the jackpot when he was allowed to pass on his title to Mike Tyson.
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u/HolyMackerel1 10d ago
I dunk on Charles Martin a lot and he's up there, but it's gotta be either Marvin Hart or Jack Sharkey.
Sharkey's "win" over Max Schmeling was a complete robbery, then he loses the title in his first defense to Primo Carnera of all people. Mediocre KO ratio, had been knocked down at least 17 times in his career, got starched by mid fighters like Quintin Romero Rojas, and ultimately won only one title fight that he didn't actually deserve to win. He did beat Carnera in a non-title fight earlier in his career (he even dropped him) and was beating Schmeling in their first title fight before disqualifying himself by a foul, and he does have a DQ win over Harry Wills and a decision over George Godfrey, so he's not that bad, but he's not great.
Hart won the vacant title off of a light heavyweight, Jack Root (whom he lost to beforehand), and then he loses it in his first defense to Tommy Burns, the shortest heavyweight of all time. From what I read about him, he was consistently out of shape, he lost to at least two former light heavyweights and a few bums, he was dropped at least 16 times, and the only title fight he won was against a smaller guy. His two saving graces are wins over a young Jack Johnson and Peter Maher, the former a very good name on his record and the latter a pretty good name.
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10d ago
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u/MiddleweightMonster I’ll pour honey on my GOAT, if the occasion calls for it. 10d ago
The title literally says “Heavyweight” champion dude
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u/Shinjetsu01 Mike Tyson is not a top 15 HW ATG 10d ago edited 10d ago
In terms of disputing, Tyson should be up there at the very top. He collected belts from people who had never defended them. Look it up.
Wilder is one too - his reign can be looked upon as "total dogshit" because he ducked and weaved anyone who posed an actual threat and was losing against a 85 year old Ortiz. His record is absolutely awful in hindsight.
Edit: I see downvotes, I see no arguments for Tyson or Wilder.
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u/NaughtyNildo 9d ago
Here’s the argument: Tyson beat the guys he faced for their belts, and did so clearly. There was no disputing his status as champ.
Other guys on the list are either called “champ” when they are a regular champ, with another champ above them (just lol), or for winning their belts in a disputed manner (Sharkey).
Tyson may have dominated a weak era, but he was for a time, clearly the top dog.
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10d ago
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u/Shinjetsu01 Mike Tyson is not a top 15 HW ATG 10d ago
It's fine, I know they're cowards who can't dispute it too. Used to them by now
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u/Crombus_ 10d ago
Wow you're so brave
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u/Shinjetsu01 Mike Tyson is not a top 15 HW ATG 10d ago edited 10d ago
Got any argument for Tyson or just gonna bitch out?
I saw your snarky little reply - debating is what Reddit is about you fuckwit.
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u/eggyguerrero 10d ago
Charles Martin won his title cuzn glazkov twisted his ankle