True Boxing Champions
You may have noticed the new link at the top of the page called "Boxing Champions". It is my attempt to get back to the "good old days" of boxing, where there was one champion in each of eight weight classes. These days, there are 17 weight classes, but I'm trying to keep us at one champion for each.
It's a pretty simple process that I've been using for years. You have to win the title in the ring. That's why I have the truly mediocre Zsolt Erdei as the light heavyweight champ, even though there are several fighters in the division who are clearly better. Erdei beat Julio Gonzalez, who beat Dariusz Michalczewski, who beat Virgil Hill. It would look more "right" if the champs had been Roy Jones and Antonio Tarver and Bernard Hopkins, but Jones would never go to Germany to fight Michalczewski, and DM wouldn't come here. That's the champ's prerogative.
The problem with lists like this is that you have to decide how to fill vacant titles. The Cyber Boxing Zone doesn't consider a vacant title to be filled unless someone unifies all the sanctioning-group belts, which means they now have 10 vacancies in 17 divisions.
I'm more liberal, because I like having champions instead of vacancies. I use a variety of ratings to come up with a consensus top-five in the division, and I award the title whenever the #1 fighter fights someone else in the top 5. That tends to provide for a lot of champs without watering things down.