ALPHA BET SOUP
DID you know Danny Williams won a world heavyweight championship in 2018? Or that later the same year he was beaten by the only man to win world titles from lightweight to heavyweight?
Did you know it’s not Joe Louis who holds the record for most consecutive world title defences, but rather a Thai who retained a super-flyweight belt 38 times? And that Louis’ 11 years atop the heavyweight division is not the sport’s longest reign, but rather it is that of a Nigerian with a 20-year cruiserweight claim?
Did you know a man two months shy of 61 once contested a WBC world title? For that matter, did you know there are two WBCs? And three WBFs?
Welcome to a parallel universe of shifting sands and altered perceptions. Hold your nose, watch your step and suspend your disbelief as you step into the weird world of boxing’s minor sanctioning bodies.
A WBU… OR TWO
For a few weeks in mid-2018, boxing regularly made back-page news in Aberdeen. After all, the city was gearing up to host a world heavyweight title match, and the local press was going big on it.
Lee McAllister vs Danny Williams, the posters said. Wait a minute… McAllister was Aberdeen’s leading pro, but wasn’t he a lightweight? And Williams? He hadn’t been licensed by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) in nearly a decade. What was going on?
The world title in question was the WBU. McAllister had bulked up to heavyweight specifically for this challenge, while Williams – aged 45 and some 14 years past a prime that saw him beat Mike Tyson and challenge Vitali Klitschko – was entering the contest as a world champ in
