THE CONTRARIAN
Thankfully, there is quantitative data to support that . Even in an era where records pertaining to titles are being broken with some regularity, thanks to the preponderance of titles and modern sports science, fighters who have won world titles in multiple weight classes are still exceedingly rare. While hundreds of thousands of people have participated in professional boxing since the dawn of the Queensberry Rules, only 56 male fighters have won titles in three weight classes. That number drops to 24 in terms of four-division champs and gets whittled down to five quintuple titleholders, two sextuple champs and one octuple champion: recent Hall of Fame inductee Manny Pacquiao. Presently, there are 17 weight classes in men’s boxing, with an additional underpublicized weight class, atomweight, in the women’s ranks. In terms of male competitors, four sanctioning body belts and one Ring championship are available in each weight class. Multi-divisional champions are more common in the sport’s lightest weight classes, where fighters can often scoop up titles quickly from 105 to 112, but become far less common as the numbers get higher on the scale. Divisional climbs most often happen because a fighter’s body has grown and it is no longer healthy to make their previous weight, if at all. Sometimes they happen out of sheer opportunism, because a fighter notices a neighboring weight class housing a champion they feel they can pick off even with a natural size disadvantage. This context is necessary for understanding the rarity, but also the gravity of what Terence Crawford is looking to accomplish against Canelo Alvarez. Crawford is already a four- division champion, holding titles at 135, 140, 147 and, most recently, 154. Although Crawford looked and seemed comfortable at junior middleweight, he certainly was not bursting at the seams physically. His targeting of Canelo Alvarez at 168 pounds is not a pursuit of convenience for the sake of a vanity title. It’s taking aim at a generational
title at middleweight (though it should be noted that the “world title” on the line was recognized by California only). Other greats have lost in more spectacular fashion in their brave attempts, such as Stanley Ketchel’s walloping from Jack Johnson, Billy Conn’s knockout losses to Joe Louis at heavyweight and Bob Foster’s knockout defeats at the hands of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. As training methods and dietary knowledge evolved over the years, the number of multi-weight champions went up. Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns each have a divisional title for every weekday, growing over time from sinewy welterweights to much bigger fighters while carrying their power up in weight. Their era set the precedent that was followed by Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, who were able to chase – and in some cases “overmarinate” – compelling and marketable foes as they gradually moved up the scale. It’s important to consider how primitive sports science was even in the heydays of Leonard and Hearns, but particularly in the eras before them. Archie Moore, notorious for moving up and down the scale, though generally out of both convenience and indulgence, would subsist mainly on a diet of sauerkraut liquid and the juices from steak – he would chew and spit out the bulk of the meat – for four weeks in order to crash himself into a given weight. Moore preached things we now understand to be important for body recomposition, like calorie counting and adequate sleep, but the extravagant dieting measures published alongside them in The Archie Moore Story were also well-received at the time. Perhaps the first instance of a modern training system for moving a fighter up in weight was seen in 1985 as Michael Spinks prepared to move up to heavyweight to challenge lineal champion Larry Holmes. Just three months prior to that fight, Spinks had defended his 175-pound crown weighing well under the division limit. Spinks’
The larger Madrimov gave Crawford a stern test before losing on points.
Armstrong knocks down Lew Jenkins at the Polo Grounds in 1940.
great, one who has shared the pound- for-pound list with him for years, and being willing to undergo a full-blown body recomposition to complete the mission. If Crawford prevails, it would be a historically significant victory, not only in terms of the magnitude of the event and the wattage of the stars involved, but for more granular reasons as well. It would make him the sixth five-division beltholder ever, and also a four-division Ring Magazine champion, the first fighter to accomplish that feat. As many things in boxing and sports in general can, the history of championship-level weight climbing can be traced back to George Dixon. Dixon, the sport’s first Black world champion (and first Black world champion of any sport), captured the bantamweight title in 1890, then became the first multi-weight champion by defeating Fred Johnson for the
in a recent interview with The Ring’s Manouk Akopyan. As monumental as a win over Canelo would be, the modern landscape couldn’t allow for the run Armstrong enjoyed in 1937 and 1938, even if a current fighter wanted to attempt it. In 1937, Armstrong won 27 bouts, 26 of them by knockout. Six of those victims were rated inside the Top 10, and one was the reigning featherweight champion, Petey Sarron. The next year, Armstrong won 14 more fights, including wins over three of the greatest to ever lace up a pair of gloves: Barney Ross for the welterweight title, Lou Ambers for the lightweight title and Baby Arizmendi in a non-title bout – a forgotten contender in the enduring “greatest Mexican fighter of all time” debate. Even Armstrong would reach his limits, however, coming up short via controversial draw against Ceferino Garcia in a bid for a fourth divisional
featherweight title in 1892. There is a reasonable debate to be had as to whether the first three-weight world champion should be considered Dixon’s conqueror, Terry McGovern, or Bob Fitzsimmons. McGovern won the bantamweight title in 1899 with a first-round knockout victory over Pedlar Palmer, the first time a first-round KO had ever taken place in a championship bout under the Queensberry Rules, which had been published 32 years earlier. He then knocked out Dixon to win the featherweight title in January of the following year, before jumping to lightweight to stop reigning champion Frank Erne. The bout was not an official title bout, so while some reporters declared McGovern the champion, Erne
held on to the title and continued to defend it until losing to Joe Gans two years later. In Fitzsimmons’ case, there was no dispute, as he won the middleweight crown in 1892, the heavyweight crown in a shocking knockout win over James J. Corbett in 1897, and then the light heavyweight crown in 1903, a rare occurrence in which a fighter retreats to a lower weight in order to pick up another title. The gold standard for multi-weight success would come three decades later, when Henry Armstrong put together a stretch that is unlikely to be matched. Crawford in fact referred to a potential win over Canelo as “some Henry Armstrong-type stuff”
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