Champs and Titleholders By Countries

July 8th, 2009

Dennis Carreon

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Around the same time last year, the United States was dominating the boxing title picture as always. They are miles ahead with 16 titles to the closest boxing power and long-time rival, Mexico with 8. Now, the rest of the world has caught up. The US is down to 9 tied with Mexico while Ukraine and Puerto Rico is just a couple of successful title challenges away. A mixture of 22 other countries from Haiti to Thailand to Spain has at least a world title to represent them in this distinguished list of countries.

As a new member of the 8CountNews team, I want to start something different for the sake of the nationalistic sweet science fans out there. Instead of listing the titleholders per division per sanctioning body, I will rank the countries by how many titles they have and maintain it as we move along every title fight.

I need to establish a few baseline rules so as not to instigate any untoward debates.

1. I will only consider the Ring magazine champions and titleholders from the 4 major sanctioning bodies - WBA, WBC, IBF & WBO. I know it's a never ending debate on the legitimacy of the alphabet organizations; nevertheless, they are the 4 that I will consider.

2. I count the titles not the titleholder. Therefore champs that hold multiple belts are counted by the number of belts they proudly wear around their waist. For example: Kelly Pavlik is counted thrice because he holds the WBC, WBO and Ring Middleweight titles.

3. The sanctioning bodies, specially the WBA, have the uncanny way of handing out belts like candies coming out of a piñata. So I excluded interim champs, WBA's regular champs (when there are unified champs), champs-in-recess, emeritus status champ, and whatever extra sanctioning fee driven title. For example: Panama's Celestino Caballero currently holds both the WBA and IBF Super Bantamweight titles. Aside from that, the WBA also has a WBA “regular” Super Bantamweight champ in Ireland’s Bernard Dunne and an interim champ in Thailand’s Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym. I will only consider Caballero’s titles and not Dunne’s nor Kratingdaenggym’s.

4. I will only consider the boxer's place of birth as their country. Jus soli not jus sanguinis. For example: Nonito Donaire is a US citizen but he was born and raised in the Philippines so count that for the Philippines. On the other hand, Brian Viloria was born in Hawaii but has Philippine ancestry so that gets tallied for the US.

So with those baseline rules in mind, here's the tally of current boxing titleholders by countries.

Rank	Country	No. of Titles	Title Holders
1st (2 are tied)	Mexico	9	Cristobal Cruz - IBF126 Raul Garcia - IBF105 Juan Manuel Marquez - Ring135;WBA135;WBO135 Fernando Montiel - WBO118 Giovanni Segura - WBA108 Edgar Sosa - WBC108 Humberto Soto - WBC130
1st (2 are tied)	USA	9	Andre Berto - WBC147 Timothy Bradley - WBO140 Steven Luevano - WBO126 Shane Mosley - WBA147 Kelly Pavlik - WBC160;WBO160;Ring160 Cory Spinks - IBF154 Brian Viloria - IBF108
3rd	Puerto Rico	7	Ivan Calderon - WBO108;Ring108 Miguel Cotto - WBO147 Jose Lopez - WBO115 Juan Manuel Lopez - WBO122 Roman Martinez - WBO130 Daniel Santos - WBA154
4th	Ukraine	6	Sergiy Dzinziruk - WBO154 Vitali Klitschko - WBC200+ Wladimir Klitschko - IBF200+;WBO200+;Ring200+ Andreas Kotelnik - WBA140
5th (3 are tied)	Armenia	4	Arthur Abraham - IBF160 Vic Darchinyan - WBA115;WBC115;IBF115
5th (3 are tied)	Japan	4	Takahiro Aoh - WBC126 Hozumi Hasegawa - WBC118 Daisuke Naito - WBC112 Toshiaki Nishioka - WBC122
5th (3 are tied)	Panama	4	Celestino Caballero - WBA122;IBF122 Guillermo Jones - WBA200 Anselmo Moreno - WBA118
8th (2 are tied)	Argentina	3	Sergio Gabriel Martinez - WBC154 Omar Andres Narvaez - WBO112 Victor Emilio Ramirez - WBO200
8th (2 are tied)	Philippines	3	Nonito Donaire - IBF112 Donnie Nietes - WBO105 Manny Pacquiao - Ring140
10th (4 are tied)	Hungary	2	Karoly Balzsay - WBO168 Zsolt Erdei - WBO175
10th (4 are tied)	Poland	2	Tomasz Adamek - IBF200;Ring200
10th (4 are tied)	Thailand	2	Denkaosan Kaovichit - WBA112 Oleydong Sithsamerchai - WBC105
10th (4 are tied)	Venezuela	2	Jorge Linares - WBA130 Edwin Valero - WBC135
14th (13 are tied)	Colombia	1	Juan Urango - IBF140
14th (13 are tied)	Denmark	1	Mikkel Kessler - WBA168
14th (13 are tied)	Germany	1	Felix Sturm - WBA160
14th (13 are tied)	Ghana	1	Joseph Agbeko - IBF118
14th (13 are tied)	Haiti	1	Jean Pascal - WBC175
14th (13 are tied)	Indonesia	1	Chris John - WBA126
14th (13 are tied)	Italy	1	Giacobbe Fragomeni - WBC200
14th (13 are tied)	Nicaragua	1	Roman Gonzalez - WBA105
14th (13 are tied)	Romania	1	Lucian Bute - IBF168
14th (13 are tied)	Russia	1	Nikolay Valuev - WBA200+
14th (13 are tied)	South Africa	1	Malcolm Klassen - IBF130
14th (13 are tied)	Spain	1	Gabriel Campillo - WBA175
14th (13 are tied)	UK	1	Carl Froch - WBC168

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