The World Boxing Council (WBC) is an international professional boxing organization. It is among the four major organizations which sanction professional boxing bouts, alongside the World Boxing Association (WBA), International Boxing Federation (IBF) and World Boxing Organization (WBO).
Floyd Joy Mayweather Jr. is an American boxing promoter and former professional boxer who competed between 1996 and 2017. He retired with an undefeated record and won 15 major world championships from super featherweight to light middleweight. This includes the Ring magazine title in five weight classes and the lineal championship in four weight classes. As an amateur, he won a bronze medal in the featherweight division at the 1996 Olympics, three U.S. Golden Gloves championships, and the U.S. national championship at featherweight.
Nonito Gonzales Donaire Jr. is a Filipino American professional boxer. He has held multiple world championships in four weight classes from flyweight to featherweight, and is the oldest boxer in history to win a bantamweight world title, as well as being the first three-time champion in that weight class. Donaire has also held world championships in three consecutive decades: the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s, being the sixth boxer to do so after Evander Holyfield, Manny Pacquiao, Bernard Hopkins, Erik Morales, and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
In combat sports where champions are decided by a challenge, the lineal championship in a weight class represents an intangible world title initially held by the victor of a bout between top contenders in the division, as commonly interpreted. An alternative, less mainstream perspective suggests that vacancies in divisional championships can only be filled by an undisputed champion. A fighter who defeats the reigning champion in a match within that weight class becomes the next lineal champion. In professional boxing, the informal term for the lineal champion is "the man who beat the man."
Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao, also billed as The Dream Match, was a professional boxing welterweight superfight. The bout took place on December 6, 2008 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. Pacquiao defeated De La Hoya via technical knockout when De La Hoya decided not to continue with the fight before the start of the ninth round. The card was a co-production of Bob Arum's Top Rank Boxing and De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions and was aired live on pay-per-view (PPV) on HBO PPV. The fight is notable for propelling Manny Pacquiao to full-blown superstar status in much of the western world, as Oscar De La Hoya symbolically "passed the torch", so to speak, to Pacquiao.
Boxing in the 2010s includes notable events about boxing which occurred between 2010 and 2019. The decade saw high intensity action in the welterweight division. The match between veterans Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao broke PPV records. The broadcast of the fight in the Philippines was watched by nearly half the country's households. Mayweather retired at a record 50-0-0 while Pacquiao became the first eight division champion. The middleweight division saw immense action in the later years of the decade. After a draw in 2017, Canelo Alvarez ended Gennady Golovkin's long reign in 2018. The heavyweight division was dominated by Klitschko brothers before Wladimir's loss to Tyson Fury in 2015. Other talents that emerged were Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder and undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksander Usyk.
Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey, billed as The Event, was a welterweight fight for the WBO welterweight championship. The bout was held on March 13, 2010, at Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas, United States. This match was put together after the long awaited "superfight" between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. had fallen through.
José Carlos Ramírez is an American professional boxer. He is a former unified champion at light welterweight, having held the World Boxing Council (WBC) title from 2018 to 2021 and the World Boxing Organization (WBO) title from 2019 to 2021. As an amateur he represented the United States at the 2012 Olympics. As of June 2020, he is ranked as the world's second best active light welterweight by The Ring and BoxRec, and third by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board.
Errol Spence Jr. is an American professional boxer. He is a former unified champion in the welterweight division, having held the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC), and International Boxing Federation (IBF) titles between 2017 and 2023. As an amateur, in the welterweight division, he won three consecutive United States national championships and represented the U.S. at the 2012 Olympics, where he reached the quarter-finals. In 2015, Spence was named Prospect of the Year by ESPN.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto, billed as Ring Kings, was a boxing super welterweight bout held on May 5, 2012, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Mayweather won the fight by unanimous decision in what was deemed to be a clear, but very competitive and exciting victory for Floyd.
Brin-Jonathan Butler is a freelance journalist, Amazon interviewer, filmmaker and host of the podcast Tourist Information. His work has been published in The Classical, The Rumpus, Harper's, The Daily Beast, Vice, ESPN The Magazine, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post and Salon.com. His book A Cuban Boxer's Journey was published 2014. The Domino Diaries was published in 2015. The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again was published in 2018 and longlisted for the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize.
Teófimo Andrés López Rivera is an American professional boxer. He has held multiple world championships in two weight classes, including the World Boxing Organization (WBO) and Ring magazine light welterweight titles since June 2023; previously he held the unified World Boxing Association (WBA), International Boxing Federation (IBF), WBO, and Ring lightweight titles between 2019 and 2021. Lopez has also held the lineal championship at lightweight and light welterweight. As an amateur, he represented Honduras at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Manny Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas, billed as The Legend/The Champ, was a boxing match for the WBO welterweight championship. The event took place on November 5, 2016 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pacquiao won the fight by unanimous decision and took the WBO welterweight title. The fight sold 300,000 pay-per-view (PPV) buys in the United States (US), earning an estimated $18 million in pay-per-view revenue.
The 2017–18 World Boxing Super Series – cruiserweight division was a World Boxing Super Series professional boxing tournament that took place between September 2017 and July 2018 in several countries. The Super Series featured eight top-rated cruiserweight boxers in a single-elimination tournament. Its winner will hold world titles for all four of boxing's major sanctioning bodies, The Ring Magazine title, as well as the Muhammad Ali trophy. The tournament was organized by Comosa AG. A super middleweight tournament was held concurrently, with prize money for both competitions totalling US$50 million.
Manny Pacquiao competed in professional boxing from 1995 to 2021. Regarded by boxing historians as one of the greatest professional boxers of all time, Pacquiao is the only boxer in history to win twelve major world titles in eight different weight divisions. He is also the first boxer in history to win the lineal championship in five different weight divisions, as well as being the first boxer in history to win major world titles in four of the original eight weight divisions of boxing, also known as the "glamour divisions": flyweight, featherweight, lightweight and welterweight.
