Cruiserweight Arsen Goulamirian elevated twice without a fight by the WBA!
One of the most least talked about divisions in boxing this year has been the cruiserweights ever since former undisputed champion Oleksandr Usyk moved up into the “land of the giants.” There’s been a minute amount of headlines about the men that are a few pounds away from being heavyweights. The division has suffered greatly with lack of attention from the boxing community.
This couldn’t be more evident with the recent back to back moves made by the WBA concerning newly elevated super champion Arsen Goulamirian (24-0, 16ko). He will be making the first defense of the title against Kane Watts (21-3, 13ko) November 15 at the Accor Hotel Arena in Paris.
TIMETABLE OF EVENTS
Goulamirian’s entire professional career has been so quiet that the hard-punching boxer has been elevated twice since he was the WBA gold champion. In May, he was elevated to regular champion and has recently been elevated to super champion without fighting anyone between the two elevations.
During the time frame between February and July 2019, there was series of missed opportunities an unexplained events that lead to where we are today. Still puzzled an clueless!
The 32 year old, was set to fight WBA “regular” champion Beibut Shumenov when legendary promoter Don King won the purse bid, however after failing to fulfill the term of the purse bid, the WBA was forced to strip the title away from the champion and award it to the challenger.
In another attempt at making a good fight inside the division, the organization’s championship committee arranged for a purse bid with then super champion Denis Lebedev. Reportedly an agreement had been reached until things would fall through again when Lebedev abruptly retired.
Now keep in mind the last time the newly crowned super champion fought was against Mark Flanagan back in October 2018. This is why, as it has been said on numerous occasions, the WBA needs to get a grip on this situation.
To be clear, this isn’t an indictment on Goulamirian, who is an excellent talent that has knocked out his last four opponents. More so, this is to point out how the WBA needs to revamp their process and come with a more efficient way of crowning champions.
All of these unexplained events are inexcusable. There is absolutely no reason why a fight with a top five ranked contender couldn’t have been scheduled at least once within the year that these unfortunate turn of events took place. If a fight couldn’t have been scheduled, the titles should have remained vacant until one could be!
What happened to fighting for the right to be called a champion?
By: Garrisson Bland
