Floyd Mayweather Jr. wants to clean up boxing’s fractured and muddied world title picture.
The former five-division champion has proclaimed for years that the sport has way too many champions.
Sanctioning bodies like the WBC, WBO, WBA, IBF, and IBO as well as Ring Magazine all have an omnipresent role in boxing by anointing champions.
Although Mayweather held titles from all of the aforementioned organizations throughout his undefeated Hall of Fame career, he wants to make sure only one matters moving forward.
“I’m going to talk with the different boxing organizations. We need to have a sit down. We really need to clean the sport of boxing up. I think it’s time to take boxing to the next level. Which means it’s time for me to come up with my own championship boxing belt where that belt trumps all titles, all belts. It doesn’t matter who is champion because only one belt is going to count,” Mayweather told BetOnline.
“In today’s era of boxing, any and everybody is champion. If you look, you have a super champion, a regular champion, an interim champion. I’m totally against it. I’m letting everyone know. I’m totally against all that interim champion. If I didn’t earn the belt by beating the champion, I don’t want the belt. So I don’t want these fighters to be proud, walking around holding up belts that you didn’t really win. There’s no such thing as an interim champion. That’s the part of boxing – the best have to fight the best. If you want to go down in history and in the Hall of Fame like myself, you have to beat tough competitors and tough champions.”
When asked if the title would be called the “money belt,” the Las Vegas-based, Grand Rapids-native Mayweather smiled and teased “you will know the name soon.”
Mayweather retired in 2017 with a record of 50-0 (27 knockouts) and has since competed in six lucrative exhibition matches.
“I fought everybody in my era, and who I needed to fight,” said Mayweather. “Fighters [today] are so worried about losing. I lost fights as an amateur. You live and you learn. Winning and losing is a part of competing against the best. The biggest and the best should fight each other, no different from what I did.”
Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer, and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, through email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com, or via www.ManoukAkopyan.com.