Talk:List of IBF world champions

Colors

Someone needs to add info on what the colors in the tables represent (orange, yellow, blue, green, gray). It seems that yellow is gold (as in highest number of days the fighter held the title in that category), gray is silver (second highest), orange is bronze (third highest), and blue is for current holders. But what is green used for? And why are there three orange boxes in the first category (heavyweight) - Foreman and Botha should not have orange, only Tyson?

Whitewashing history

The corruption under Bobby Lee has bearing on records, which, unfortunately, nonetheless stand, and so is pertinent to researchers. This section gets deleted occasionally, invalidating historic fact — adding Reformation section would be more appropriate.Lindenfall (talk) 19:52, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Mac Dreamstate (talk · contribs) I see that you've deleted the pre-2000 information noted above, which is historically significant. I would not have put it in the lead, but there wasn't really anywhere else for it, since the content is all chart... including pre-2000, so it is needed as a preamble. (And I'm kind of surprised that no one else tried improving it, as it happens.) I've seen your name a lot, so know that the whole arena interests you, and am not sure why you would just delete factually significant information. What would you suggest? Separate pages for pre- and post-2000? A section, perhaps? Simply deleting history isn't the answer. Lindenfall (talk) 00:51, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Easy answer: put it on the main International Boxing Federation article, using a more neutrally-worded tone than your previous submission. The scope of this article should be just to list the champions of the organisation, not their controversies otherwise. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 15:10, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I really wasn't sure and, again, am surprised that no one has tried to do something different with it (other than simply deleting it). I went with the quote because how can you neutralize such a judgement? Lindenfall (talk) 23:04, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

USBA/IBF

"The IBF was preceded by the United States Boxing Association (USBA), a regional championship organization like the North American Boxing Federation (NABF)." All links to the USBA lead to the IBF's main Wikipedia article. I think that the best way to go about this would be to replicate something similar to the current situation of List of WBA world champions in the way we list champions of the NBA and the secondary championship lineage. The only issue I see with this is that the USBA world championship is technically the same title as it is today so we wouldn't be able to seamlessly merge the lineage with the historic IBF championship lineage. What becomes complicated in my opinion is that when Marvelous Marvin Hagler won the inaugural middleweight title against Scypion, the announcers referred to him as the new "USBA" middleweight champion. We will need to research whatever date they formally changed their name to the IBF as that was the fight that legitimized the sanctioning body. Before that fight, the IBF was most certainly referring to itself as the USBA and was not recognized as a title needed for undisputed so I don't really know right now what the best course of action would be for this. Perhaps create individual lists for the USBA championship lineage as our list of the WBA champions currently shows the secondary lineage. Perhaps at middleweight, we could write a note under Hagler's reign stating that he beat Scypion for the inaugural title and was awarded the inaugural IBF title? I am not sure what the time line is right now, this is just a rough estimate with guesses. It is known that when they were awarding titles while solely referred to as the USBA that it was not a title needed for undisputed. This is obvious because the welterweight division was considered to have had an undisputed champion when Leonard beat Hearns with only the WBA and WBC titles. Furthermore, the USBA's first welterweight champion was Thomas Hearns, but he was stripped sometime before OR after he won the WBA world title from Cuevas. They stripped him and recognized a new USBA champion. I am not sure what the most efficient or clear way to list these USBA championship lineages is, but I am leaning towards keeping it as a "Historical/Secondary lineage" to the full IBF title as these lists of title holders should have a place on the list of IBF world champions Wikipedia article. CaPslOcksBroKEn (talk) 16:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)