The titles

During Vic Toweel’s reign as South Africa’s first world champion, from 1950 to 1952, there was one titleholder per division and just eight weight classes.

Toweel was champion alongside greats like heavyweight Rocky Marciano and middleweight Sugar Ray Robinson.

Since then, greed and profit motives have swelled the number of weight divisions to 17, as well as the pool of world sanctioning bodies, each boasting its own champion.

The World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council worked pretty well together until splitting in the 1970s. In the 1980s, two breakaway organisations started up, the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organisation.

These are the four main bodies, with myriad others starting as commercial interests in the 1990s.

The Ring magazine awards its own belts to fighters it recognises as genuine world champions, and Hekkie Budler is one of only four at the moment, with 13 divisions vacant.