What's In A Name, Pt 1: The Number One Contender?

An article was written on the boxing website I generally get my immediate news from entitled 'Before the Complaining Starts - In Defense of Mandatory Fighters.' The article first mentions Miguel Cotto's WBA mandatory defense against a complete unknown and then points out that it doesn't matter. If the mandatory contender is really a joke, then it's an easy win for Cotto and if it's a tough fight than clearly he wasn't a joke and deserves his shot. The article goes on to argue that 'popularity cannot matter more than talent.'

The fighter whose talent matters more than his popularity is Yuriy Nuzhnenko. Upon a search of the WBA ratings I see he is their interim welterweight champion, hence why he is Cotto's mandatory defense. When I jump over to the WBC website and search their ratings, I see that he is not ranked anywhere in their top forty. Andre Berto and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. are in their top ten, despite being untested prospects, but Nuzhnenko is nowhere to be found. The WBC's mandatory contender (or at least their number one contender) is the aforementioned untested prospect Andre Berto who is a long way from being ready to face Mayweather. I have a piece on his most recent fight down the blog, check it out.

So I go check out the IBF ratings, looking for Nuzhnenko again. Their number one contender is Joshua Clottey, who I've heard of and who is more experienced than Berto and who (unlike Berto and Nuzhnenko) is ranked on The Ring magazine's top ten. According to The Ring, Clottey is the #9 welterweight in the world. No sign of Nuzhnenko, but then the IBF only has their top fifteen fighters posted online. Maybe he's somewhere in their top forty, far enough down. Unfortunately, their PDF archive of their rankings doesn't go past #15 either. So I can't tell you for sure if they've ranked the WBA's mandatory challenger; if they have, he's nowhere near the mandatory spot.

Maybe the WBO. They'll rank anyone, after all. They even said Tommy Morrison was the heavyweight champion of the world, once. Let's see what they say. They also only post their top fifteen online, and they don't include Nunzhnenko on their list. Their number one contender is ex-titlist Antonio Margarito, who is ranked #5 by the ring and who is the logical number one challenger for a title that he himself only relatively recently lost in a tremendous fight most thought was very close.

So, back to the WBA ratings and I take another look. Whom did Nuzhnenko beat to become the mandatory challenger to the WBA's 'champion'? He beat Frenchman Frederic Klose, still ranked #4 by the WBA but unranked by anyone else. This was the only opponent on his resume ranked even by the WBA, and Klose's record was 41-5 coming into the fight for the interim title. One of his five losses was to nondescript (even in Europe) Oliver Meunier, who went on to become a European journeyman. Another was to Stephane Cazeaux, who hasn't fought since 2000 and has a record of 23-3 (2). There is a beautiful symmetry to Cazeaux, he won two fights by knockout and he lost two fights by knockout in collecting his 23-3 record; but I don't see a guy who loses to him being the number one contender in the world, even for a shot at Cotto, who isn't recognized universally as champion. I don't see beating a guy who lost to him for the right to be the number one challenger to Miguel Cotto as entirely legitimate.

Klose is the most illustrious name on Nuzhnenko's undefeated record and Klose only fought two names I recognize at all: Okaty Urkal who is best known for fighting the best guys, giving them a hard time, and losing and Michel Trabant. I know Trabant because of his rather poor performance against Andre Berto, when he retired after the sixth round. That's the same Berto fight I mentioned earlier being further down the list of entries in this very same blog. Check it out for my thoughts on Trabant. Klose did, in his defense, beat Trabant in a rematch. Still, this is more than enough to question his legitimacy. Interestingly, he's been ranked by all three of the majors and by the semi-major at some point: still #4 by the WBA, #9 by the IBF in December of 2007, #14 by the WBO in December of 2006, and even #1 by the WBC back in July of 2007. Between his loss to Urkal in June and Nuzhnenko in December, he did little to earn that #1 rating except beat Giovanni Parisi. I remember who Giovanni Parisi is, but do any of you?

What has Nuzhnenko done to deserve a spot as mandatory challenger for any title? He beat Klose, whose rankings don't appear terribly hard earned. That's all. He did win the WBA Intercontinental Title in 2006 and did defend it twice, but the title fight and the second defense were against guys whose biggest claims to fame were that they lost to guys whose names people would recognize. Nuzhnenko beat Klose, a couple guys who lost to Oktay Urkal, a guy who lost to Ike Quartey, and an undefeated Uzbeki prospect with no big fight experience. Maybe, before climbing into the ring with Cotto, Nuzhnenko should fight Oktay Urkal. If Urkal gave him a hard time, but he still beat him, then he'd have some claim to being one of the best guys. If he looked good against Urkal, he'd have some basis for calling out Cotto.

A lot of the best European fighters are no longer the 'European fighters' of yore that American boxing writers have had so much fun subjecting to ridicule. Even some of the European fighters of yore weren't 'European fighters' in that sense. There are those who see The Ring's ratings as having a decidedly North and Latin American bias, and I don't personally think Zab Judah belongs on the top ten anymore and hasn't for awhile; but he's an ex-champion whose losses have been to the best competition so it's not hard to understand why he stays. Keeping that in mind, it's hard to argue with The Ring's welterweight ratings.

According to those, Floyd Mayweather is the champion. Miguel Cotto is merely the number one contender. That's a lot better, in my opinion, than being the WBA's paper champion.