By Karl Freitag
WBA President Gilberto Jesús Mendoza addressed the major reforms the WBA is undertaking during a virtual press conference on Wednesday.
Mendoza confirmed that all WBA interim championship titles are withdrawn with immediate effect and the gold championship titlists will be inserted into the top 15 ratings. These changes will take effect in the next WBA ratings.
“At this point, the Championships Committee, headed by Mr. Carlos Chavez and the vice-chairman Julio Thyme, are working notifying promoters about these changes,” stated Mendoza. “This has to be part of our route to get one champion per division. We’re reducing all the championships. We accept the criticism of the media. We accept the criticism of the fans. And we have given priority to their thoughts.”
Mendoza also announced that Gary Shaw has been appointed as WBA presidential adviser and Chief-of-Staff of the WBA Directorate. Shaw was a long-time New Jersey Boxing Commission official, who then moved on to become a very successful boxing promoter with Main Events and his own company Gary Shaw Productions.
I am very happy about this. There should only be ONE champion. If there are 4 belts, then 1 champion per belt. It is bad enough there are 4 organizations. Having 40 WBA champions per division, with 50 different divisions is crazy.
The WBA needs to stop this nonsense. Good for them. Cleaning up the mess.
yes for sure a step in the right direction
A rare move in the right direction by the WBA. I think their reputation is probably beyond repair with many fans, but at least they’re trying here. This feels like a desperation move though. I wonder if somebody with influence told them to clean up their mess, or they’d stop recognizing the WBA altogether. Maybe the Association of Boxing Commissions? Whatever the case, things won’t truly be fixed until these sanctioning bodies are gone for good.
If this is immediate and FINAL as indicated we could be very happy. The reason many are extra pissed is because A) it went on for so long and B) it was at least 10 years ago after a lot of bad feedback had ALREADY arrived from the same fans that they indicated they would “phase out” the interim and REGULAR titles. Well that was a lie, it was a SHELL GAME. I took the time on boxrec to look at each WBA regular vs “Super” title fight. They would shift these in and out over the years so that you did not know whether they were running both (they would have a super title fight one month and a regular one the next) or if a super title was vacated they would either have the regular titlist automatically promoted or fight someone for the super. They did the same garbage with the Interim to Regular titles but you never knew with any rhyme/reason with regularity among all weight classes if REGULAR/Interim title fights were gone permanently or it was just a couple months, or 6 or a year or so. They would phase this interim title out or regular title out for some weightclasses, as they simultaneously added them back in on others. After a time they would just do the same trick among other weight classes so that casuals would forget.
If Mr C.C. and J.T. are men of their word I expect ALL of these to be dropped. No phasing out just so Chris Mannix and others won’t mention it for a time.
When the WBA does it that may spur the other bodies to get rid of some of their extra belts, ones with names other than “Regular” or “Interim”.
Glad to see the change come if it is REAL. Hopefully they have changed their ways. Hasn’t the WBA had enough time to make some money and keep it?