Haye champ for five minutes - WBA order ridiculous interim title match
by Ian McNeilly

The WBA have ordered a ludicrous heavyweight 'interim' title match between Kali Meehan and Ruslan Chagaev - and the winner is mandated to face the victor of champion David Haye's first defence against John Ruiz.

Don King lost his grip on the WBA title when his man Nikolai Valuev was recently dethroned by Haye in Germany.

Aussie Meehan's promoter is...wait for it...Don King!

Ah, even half-describing the situation makes me feel like I'm gargling with diarrhoea.

Meehan apparently earned the number one ranking with this particular brand of moving self-satire by beating DaVarryl Williamson in October 2007 (God knows how seeing as this match was for something called the 'WBO NABO title').

Since then, he has blown away the legendary Jeremy Bates and future Hall of Famer Dominique Alexander - the latter being his most recent fight back in August 2008. All of a sudden, coinciding with King not having a piece of the champion or mandatory challenger Ruiz (by the way, 'the mandatory challenger' is ranked number two in the WBA's insane world), Meehan finds himself fighting for this utterly worthless title.

King said, presumably with no hint of irony, “Kali has been very loyal and committed to the WBA and their problems while waiting over two years to appear in the world championship match he earned. He understood their problems and has been patient, going along with them to keep the WBA in good standing.”

Good standing? Boxing is killing itself.

Source: http://news.boxrec.com/news

It´s not a shock though. Only a fighter who fights five times a year and doesn´t argue over money or venue can stop these interim titles....

so thats hayes second fight under sauerland...

I don't understand the WBA's logic here? They're in this game to make money [fullstop]. They stand to make more money, re: a percentage cut from David Haye vs 'A' Klitschko than they do Haye vs Meeham or Chagaev. So why try to block or remove their involvement with such a fight?

Money from King to keep the belt in the Kingdom?

If you think that's bad, the WBA had two fights for their Super-Middleweight belt on the same day.

As well as Ward-Kessler, Dimiri Sartison beat Stjepan Bozic for the belt on the Zsolt Erdei undercard.

God help.

I've said it before we need a billionaire boxing fan to step in and buy out the governing bodies. Someone with more money than sense who just wants to see the best fights so the best fight the best.

In all fairness the money that had gone into the super 6 seems to have benefitted the sport coz we've already seen some upsets/near upsets.

Someone with money who says floyd i'll give you £10m to fight many and manny i'll give you £10m to fight floyd and whatever else you can make outta the fight that ive paid for is yours.

Where is the sheikh boxing fan?!

why would the sanctioning bodies agree to sell to this guy coz they love creating interim, regular and super champs coz it generates them more money and they dont particulary give a shit about us or a billionaire superman who wants to save us from the bad guys especially as they are the bad guys.

Sartison is WBA champ that makes 5 champs at super middleweight

My one hope with this kind of thing (although it's been my hope for over a decade now) is that the governing bodies will keep doing more of this kind of nonsense - multiplying and multiplying titles, making themselves more and more irrelevant and ridiculous, spreading themselves so thin that they eventually dry up and evaporate in the hot sun. Let these idiots screw themselves out of existence, and then maybe we can go back to some non-ABC world title system.

It's a pleasant daydream I have sometimes.

Let The Ring take over deciding who's champion. They do it already - I think I'd rather let them do it officially.

Do the alphabet boys take a percentage then? I thought they just took a fixed sanctioning fee for each contenst.

What happens if DLH sells the Ring to let's say Don King. Would you be happy with Don King deciding who's champion?

No sport, should have it's champions, policy or ratings decided by a privately owned company.

All of the goiverning bodies are privately owned, aren';t they?

And DLH taking over the ring seems to have made no difference to the way they behave - they were slagging him off going into the PAcquiao fight, if memory serves.

I don't think that they are privately owned Gav, at least not in the sense that they can be bought by anyone with a wad of cash.

The WBC, WBA, and the IBF have members for example the British Boxing Board of Control are members. The Ring has none of these things as far as I know.

It doesn't matter to me if The Ring slagged of DLH or not. It's still only a magazine.

------- Bunch of crooks from Panama and Venezuela primarily by the officer list.

All part of the WBA plan to keep the public off balance as to who the real champ is. Fitting that Haye earned a 1/8 share and will be to be passed around like a whore in the rest of King's stable. Gonna break him in real gentle like with Quiet Man for starters.

These orgs are getting more than sanctioning fees these days. For big fights they've horned in on a % of the pie. Look to be very well fed and plumped at their convention last month, don't you think?