Photo by Stephanie Trapp/Showtime
On the same night Deontay Wilder defended his WBC-recognized throne another heavyweight champion was crowned.
The relatively unknown and entirely untested Charles Martin claimed the IBF heavyweight title after “beating” Vyacheslav Glazkov on January 16. Glazkov, fortunate himself to be in a championship match, fell because of a knee injury in just the third round.
Such is the state of boxing that Martin, at 29 and unproven, is officially a “world champion.”
The sport of gloved arts is made up of 17 weight classes with, including “regular” and “super” champions, nearly 80 current titleholders.
The four most prominent sanctioning bodies handing out these trinkets are the IBF, WBC, WBA and the WBO.
The WBA is currently under the most heat after repeatedly promoting champions to “super champion” and crowning another (usually undeserving) boxer as their “regular champion.”
If the worst champions in the entire sport were ranked, the WBA could certainly offer many candidates.
What follows is that ranking. WBA regular champs have been included to provide some perspective to their lack of merit.
This list is based on defeating quality opposition (there wasn’t much of that) and most-recent performances as a belt holder. Boxer’s ages were considered as well. The younger the fighter, the little more leeway their thin resumes were given.
Dishonorable Mentions: The Heavyweights
Photo by Lucas Noonan/Premier Boxing Champions
It’s been nearly two decades since the heavyweight landscape of the 1990’s was the talk of boxing.
Names, young and old, like Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson, Tommy Morrison, David Tua, George Foreman, Riddick Bowe, Evander Holyfield and so many more made up arguably the richest heavyweight era of all-time.
Now, the heavyweight division is desperate for life. An influx of young, brash talent in Tyson Fury and prospects Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker has helped.
Deontay Wilder was supposed to be the future too.
Instead, Wilder has been granted voluntary title defense after voluntary title defense by the WBC—most recently against Artur Szpilka who was outboxing him before being caught by a monster right hand. He’s entertaining but not carrying himself like a true champion.
In 2014, the WBA suggested Ruslan Chagaev was a world champion too after barely beating Fres Oquendo, a 41-year-old Puerto Rican.
Chagaev, 37, was a competent contender in his heyday, even beating the monster Nikolay Valuev in 2007 for a world title. But how the WBA can even begin to call a man like Chagaev a champion is the first example of the WBA’s insolence.
Ryoichi Taguchi
WBA Light Flyweight Champion
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Japan’s most-recent annual New Year’s Eve showcase featured five world title fights.
One of which was Ryoichi Taguchi’s WBA light flyweight defense versus Luis de la Rosa in support of stablemate Takashi Uchiyama’s 24-fight unbeaten streak.
The Japanese made easy work of Rosa, forcing the Columbian to quit on the stool. Rosa, however, had no business fighting for a belt. His only two wins over the last three years were to Deivis Narvaez (0-20) and Gustavo Cortes (11-31-1).
After winning the WBA belt in 2014 over Alberto Rossel (a decent opponent), Taguchi has made two title defenses. There are a few other nice touches to his 23-2-1 record: a points loss to world-beater Naoya Inoue; a sixth-round technical knockout of Yu Kimura, the WBA light flyweight champion after a controversial victory over Pedro Guevara; and maybe a decision last year over Florante Condes, a bit of a strawweight legend but long past his expiration date.
Asian Boxing, the gurus of all things Eastern boxing, frequently refer to Inoue’s decision win over Taguchi as the two-division titlist’s toughest professional match.
A competitive fight with him “Monster” Inoue, given his promising future, is a fine feather to stick in anyone’s cap.
But it is not enough to keep Taguchi off this list.
Wanheng Menayothin
WBC Minimumweight Champion
Minimumweights, by default, are oft considered for a list like this. The division lacks much of any depth.
All but one (Hekkie Budler) of the four major sanctioning bodies’ 105-pound champions were originally included. This author, eventually, decided to leave off WBO beltholder Kosei Tanaka, who, for all intents and purposes, is still a prospect at 20 years old and a professional of just six fights.
WBC-crowned Wanheng Menayothin, born Seansuree Moonsuree, however, has 40 bouts to his hell-to-spell name. He’s a brute of a strawweight who doesn’t give his adversaries an inch.
The Thai picked up the WBC strap in 2014 but more impressively became the first man to stop Oswaldo Novoa, a ex-world champion and formerly unbreakable Mexican brawler.
In 2011, Menayothin defeated one-time IBF champion Florante Condes, a monster-punching strawweight.
That’s where the 30-year-old prizefighter’s ledger begins to lose its sparkle. Never stepping outside of Thailand has produced a heap of mismatches.
Four more uncompetitive bouts made up Menayothin’s 2015 but rumors of a defense against wunderkind Carlos Buitrago, teammate to one Roman Gonzalez, could give the Thai a chance to prove his worth.
Anthony Crolla
WBA Lightweight Champion
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Times were gloom for Anthony Crolla following a fractured skull he acquired from chasing down a pair of burglars in late 2014 when he was scheduled to fight the polished Cuban Richar Abril.
It was just a year later when Crolla beat Darleys Peres by stunning knockout for the WBA lightweight alphabet title. It should have been the Lancashire lad’s second win over Perez after soundly outboxing the Columbian four months prior. But he was forced to settle for a majority draw.
The incredible turnaround earned Crolla, nicknamed “Million Dollar,” The Ring Magazine’s “Most Inspirational” fighter award. Behind the fairy tale narrative, however, lays a mediocre record of 30-4-3 that includes just 12 KOs.
Another big night for the Englishman came in 2013 when he outpointed former world champion Gavin Reese—at least what was left of the Welshman after being taken apart by Adrien Broner that same year.
The 29-year-old Crolla is a fine domestic talent and nothing more.
It would be insulting to consider Crolla’s career-threatening injury fortunate. But he would have been outright exposed had the affliction not prevented his fight with Abril.
Lee Haskins
IBF Bantamweight Champion
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When Randy Caballero missed weight in November, Lee Haskins was promoted from interim champion, which he won by upsetting Tyosuke Iwadsa, to fully IBF titlist.
One notable name he’s beaten is the granite Stuart Hall, another former IBF champ, just a year after Stuey dropped the European trinket to the exceptional Jamie McDonnell.
The 32-year-old Haskins holds a win over McDonnell too. But it was only an eight rounder and McDonnell, only 22 at the time, was a veteran of just 10 professional fights.
Three losses mar the switch-hitting Englishman’s record and none of them are to elite competition. Stephane Jamoye, whose current record stands at 28-7 (16 KOs), brutalized Haskins in 2012 en route to a Round 8 TKO.
There’s no upside left for Haskins. If his manager is serious, like he told BBC.com, about matching him up against Shinsuke Yamanaka, the premier bantamweight on Earth, then money is the deciding factor because his man doesn’t stand a chance.
Liam Smith
WBO Super Welterweight Champion
Photo by Action Images/Craig Brough
Liverpool’s Liam Smith has never competed against a world-class fighter in eight years as a professional and his leaky defense is a troubling sight.
He was lucky that big-punching Michel Soro fell into promotional issues with Top Rank Boxing ahead of their arranged junior middleweight title fight in 2015.
Soro is a Frenchman who thrived at the European level and utterly destroyed Glen Tapia.
“Beefy” Smith instead fought John Jackson for the WBO trinket, an American who had never even trained for a 12-round fight. Smith flattened his opponent in Round 7 but not before eating a countless number of jabs.
The undefeated Englishman didn’t look anymore the defensive savant against Jimmy Kelly last December, continuing to fight down to the level of the stiffs promoter Fran Warren has put in front of him.
The two were in the news recently. Talks of a proposed matchup against the excellent Amir Khan have hit the headlines, per BoxingScene.com.
There’s one problem; Khan doesn’t fight in Smith’s division.
Jose Argumedo
IBF Minimumweight Champion
Photo by Jose Argumedo/Getty Images
Mexico’s Jose Argumedo, the second strawweight on this list, was just a year removed from dropping a decision to former title challenger Carlos Velarde when he upset Katsunari Takayama for the IBF hardware on New Year’s Eve 2015.
The “Lightning Kid” is also the only man he’s beaten with more than 20 professional bouts to their name.
There’s merely one other notable name on Argumedo’s ledger. That’s Oswaldo Novoa, a former world champion and real banger.
Argumedo lost to Novoa in 2012 but his fight with Takayama was an action-packed one—Takayama scraps always are. The Japanese suffered a bad cut in Round 2 from a clash of heads and Argumedo, to his credit, jumped on the opportunity, working away at the cut with his fists.
As much as Takayama typically gets hit, he was rattled even more so from a lack of vision. The Lightning Kid endured another cut in the ninth stanza and the fight went to the scorecards where they showed Argumedo slightly ahead, crowning the challenger.
The 27-year-old Argumedo fought valiantly. But his resume is completely void of any other sort of depth and experience. His record: 16-3-1.
Eduard Troyanovsky
IBF Super Lightweight Champion
Photo by Victor Sokolov
Cesar Cuenca, who couldn’t hammer a nail into a stick of butter, was the IBF 140-pound champion and undefeated at 48-0 in November of last year when he fell to Eduard Troyanovsky and the “Marciano Jinx.”
No different from Paul Spadafora two years prior and Larry Holmes in 1985, Cuenca saw former heavyweight luminary Rocky Marciano’s elusive 49-0 mark elude him.
Troyanovsky lifted the IBF title after tangling up Cuenca in a clinch that led to both fighters spilling over on the ground. Cuenca, of Argentina, complained that he could not see and the bout was called to a halt in Round 6.
It’s easy to believe the defending champion was looking for a way out after repeatedly eating left uppercuts from the challenger. He was too used to facing limited competition and, still, could only muster two knockout wins in nearly 50 fights.
The 35-year-old Troyanovsky is cut from a different cloth. The undefeated Russian (23-0, 20 KOs) is a spindly puncher. But the feather-fisted Cuenca is his best win. He has a long way to go before proving himself a legitimate talent in the rich 140-pound weight class.
At his advanced age, time isn’t on his side.
Charles Martin
IBF Heavyweight Champion
Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images
Enter Boxing’s newest champion.
Charles Martin, a gigantic southpaw, lifted the IBF heavyweight strap last weekend after beating (if you want to call it that) Vyacheslav Glazkov. Glazkov suffered a tear in his anterior cruciate ligament (ouch!) in the third round and was unable to continue.
The IBF trifle was left vacant after the sanctioning body stripped Tyson Fury for agreeing to a rematch with Wladimir Klitschko instead of a squash match with Glazkov.
Martin, 29, has never lost but has never beaten a credible opponent either. His matchup with Glazkov was the first 12-rounder of his career.
The new champion is saying all the right things, ad interim.
“I want to unify the titles,” Martin said via World Boxing News. “I want Tyson Fury.”
Martin utilizes his scary 80-inch reach well against tomato cans. But how will that translate into a fight with a man in possession of the skill and size of Fury?
Fury is set to rematch Klitschko sometime in the spring. Martin will be 30 years old by the time he can get his earliest crack at the Englishman.
For now, he remains completely unproven.
Giovanni De Carolis
WBA Super Middleweight Champion
Giovanni De Carolis was boxing’s newest “world champion” until the IBF belt fell into Charles Martin’s lap last weekend.
The strapping Italian won the WBA joke of a championship in the second weekend of January. All he had to do was knock out the 20-year-old Vincent Feigenbutz in Germany. It was a rematch of the young pro’s disputed unanimous decision victory last October.
De Carolis, 31, has five other losses on his record and has only competed at the world-class level once, coming up short to current No. 1 super middleweight Arthur Abraham in 2013. “King Arthur” has a tendency to give away early rounds and that fight was no different.
But the Italian’s pot-shotting strategy did give the German fits throughout the fight.
Outside of that there is not really anything else to see about De Carolis’ fight history. Even Feigenbutz admitted to The Ring that he had never even seen him fight before. He’s on the wrong side of 30 and just half of his 24 wins have come by knockout.
It would be a gross mismatch if he were paired up against buzzsaw brawler Fedor Chudinov, the WBA’s other super middleweight champion.
Pungluang Sor Singyu
WBO Bantamweight Champion
A professional boxer by 16, Pungluang Sor Singyu has over 110 combined boxing and Muay Thai contests under his belt.
His gaudy record of 51-3 (with 35 knockouts) inside the square circle, though, is a byproduct of hiding in his native Thailand.
AJ Banal, a once overhyped Pinoy prospect, is Sor Singyu’s only remotely notable victory. They fought for the WBO bantamweight title in 2012. The “action” was evenly contested through seven rounds until the two began trading low blows in Round 8. A few flurries by the Thai put Banal down in the ninth round. He made it to his feet but ultimately turned his back in forfeit.
The 27-year-old Sor Singyu immediately dropped the WBO belt to Paulus Ambunda in his very next fight. He received another world title shot against Tomoki Kameda in 2014 only to be obliterated by a liver shot knockout.
When Kameda vacated the 118-pound title last year, Sor Singyu was granted yet another opportunity for the strap against Ryo Akaho in August.
The Thai knocked out Akaho in two rounds in front of a partisan crowd with a hefty dose of rabbit punching that referee Robert Byrd paid no mind to.
A scheduled title defense against another no-hoper in Jetro Pabustan )26-2-6) is in line for February. If Sor Singyu retains his belt don’t expect any unification bouts.
FightNews.com caught up with the WBO titlists in late 2015 and he shot down the idea of fighting another world champion, saying he only wants to fight in Thailand for the time being.
Sor Singyu doesn’t deserve a belt. But his unprofessionalism, inconsistency and complete unwillingness to fight legit competition is deserving of top placement here.
