BoxRec

I know they are a joke, as many other titles are, but why aren't they trying to demonstrate at least some credibility ? What are they basing their rankings on ?

Example: Geale who has fought at 160 all his career and lost his last fight (and 3 out of 5 last fights, all at 160), fights for a vacant IBO SMW title against Renold Quinlan (10-1-0) ranked #54 by boxrec. What a pathetic "title" fight. Neither side is even close to qualifying.

Top-tier fighters won't pay sanctioning fees to hold world title belts that carry no prestige, but second-tier fighters may be willing to do so if it helps promote their bouts.

The IBO is not a charitable organisation and they need to generate money to pay the bills, so they have a vested interest in allowing their belts to be held by fighters willing to pay their sanctioning fees. They also need to have mildly recognisable names included amongst their list of champs to give their organisation some form of credibility, regardless of form.

Fury, Huck, Golovkin, Lara, Troyanovsky are not top tier enough for you ? Yes, most of the rest are not top tier, but allowing that, IBO are shooting themselves into a foot devaluing their titles.

boxing_rocks wrote:Fury, Huck, Golovkin, Lara, Troyanovsky are not top tier enough for you ? Yes, most of the rest are not top tier, but allowing that, IBO are shooting themselves into a foot devaluing their titles.

The presence of exceptions does not disprove the existence of the general rule. So why bother pointing them out?

Just because the Sahara desert receives almost an inch of rain per year, doesn't mean it should be proclaimed to be a rainforest!

They are not for real [IBO] but if you had to win one of the lesser World Title's its probably the BEST of the lot because some Champions with the REAL belt's [WBC/WBA/WBO/IBF] hold IBO belt's its a better look being WBO/IBO or WBC/IBO and you can be called a unified World Champion instead of holding just holding one legit World Title until the IBO can force their Champion's to make mandatory's defence's fighter's like Wlad/GGG and the like they the [IBO] will be the World Title you hold when you are not the REAL World Champion but still above IBA/IBC/IBU/WBU/WBF.

The IBO is a title to have if you have others. I recall Lennox Lewis championing it with his WBC strap. On its own, it's pretty damn worthless.

However, if you look at GGG and until he lost, Wlad - it's another world title to the other straps.

It could see it becoming legit after a while. They'd need to change the rules a bit to make their champs fight better opponents though.

IBO Titles are often held by good fighters, but I'm sure the feeling in Boxing is we need less belts, not more.

Their rankings are actually fairly solid, but it seems that a lot of top fighters don't care much about the belt, which often leads to significantly lower ranked guys fighting for it.

Obviously it's hard to take something like Geale-Quinlan seriously as a SMW world title fight.

boxing_rocks wrote:Fury, Huck, Golovkin, Lara, Troyanovsky are not top tier enough for you ? Yes, most of the rest are not top tier, but allowing that, IBO are shooting themselves into a foot devaluing their titles.

Most top fighters who hold IBO belts hold them along with at least one of the major belts Fury, Golovkin, Lara, Troyanovsky ect they see it more as a bonus rather than a major title.