They have taken to calling the state for world professional boxing "alphabet soup". There's the WBO, WBA, WBC and IBF. All of them naming champions and contenders and seldom do the twain meet. For that reason most boxing enthusiasts look to Ring Magazine for the true picture.
Last Friday night in Montreal the IBF named Lucian Bute their junior middleweight champion after a TKO win over Alejandro Berria. While Berria had been listed the IBF champion, Ring Magazine did not recognize him among the top ten contenders. The best junior middleweight is the immensely talented Joe Calzaghe of England. Calzaghe has held the WBO title for ten years; successfully defending it 20 times. In two weeks he'll fight Ring's number one contender Mikkel Kessler of Denmark, the holder of the WBC and WBA titles.
So, while it's a Montreal feel-good story that Bute is undefeated and has a piece of a world title, in Ring Magazine all it got him was a one-notch bump in the rankings--to 4th. High altitude to be sure, but there's still a lot of work to be done.
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