Issues
An issue in the implementation of a "lineal championship" is what to do if the lineal champion retires, dies, or moves to a different weight class. Different ways of resolving this vacancy mean the "lineal championship" may itself be subject to dispute. In the NBA/NYSAC era, a title vacancy was generally filled by having a box-off between 2, 4, or even more top-ranked contenders.
One example given by Cliff Rold of BoxingScene is the light-heavyweight title, considered vacant from the time Michael Spinks went up to heavyweight in 1985 until 1996. While Rold considers Virgil Hill's defeat of Henry Maske (who were the two highest rated boxers) as the beginning of the new lineage, as does Cyber Boxing Zone and the International Boxing Research Organization, Ring Magazine and HBO controversially trace the title through Roy Jones.
Another criticism of the lineal championship is that a fighter may defend it against inferior opponents. For example, George Foreman was considered lineal champion from 1994 till 1997, when Shannon Briggs beat him. After the WBA and IBF stripped him of their titles in 1995, Foreman fought only two, low-ranked opponents before Briggs. The lineal champion is not necessarily the boxer viewed as the best. Cyber Boxing Zone and BoxingScene considered Zsolt Erdei the lineal light-heavyweight champion from his 2004 defeat of Julio César González until 2009, when he vacated his title and moved up to cruiserweight; as he had not fought the highest-ranked opponents in the interim, Cliff Rold conceded, "while the concept of a champion needing to lose a title in the ring is solid, the practice is sometimes highly flawed".
Read more about this topic: Lineal Championship
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