We’ve got a new heavyweight champion of the world. Haven’t you heard?

That’s right. In near-obscurity (even though it was held at the Hard Rock Casino in Florida), Trevor Bryan, a undefeated former national amateur champion, stopped Bermane Stiverne, who hadn’t won a fight since 2015, in the eleventh round.

As it was billed, at stake was the WBA heavyweight championship.

And to be honest, nobody really cared.

Bryan came into the fight as the WBA’s “interim” champion.

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Stiverne was a late substitute for Mahmoud Charr (formerly known as Manuel Charr), who hadn’t even fought since November 2017 and is listed as a WBA “champion in recess.” Charr could not get the proper paperwork to enter the United States (he lives in Germany, by way of Lebanon), and this was likely the result of some skulduggery on the part of Don King (Bryan’s promoter), but that’s another story for another time.

And looming in the background was Fres Oquendo, a one-time contender who has not fought since 2014 and will be 48 years old in a couple of months, yet was #15 in the WBA’s world ratings as recently as last August and is still laying claim to the right to a title shot.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZLWDEB524f4

How? Why?

It is a long story and unfortunately we don’t have enough time or space to tell you all of it, but suffice it to say that through a series of legal actions taken by Oquendo, the WBA considered itself compelled to give him an opportunity for another championship fight, stemming from a controversial 2014 loss to Ruslan Chagaev.

To say that this saga meandered a bit would be an understatement. Oquendo seemed set to get his chance a couple of times, only to see his opponent test positive for banned substances, which forced postponements. He was also asked to step aside a couple of times, conditioned upon the guarantee of a title shot, which is how Charr wound up with the belt.

We’re not doing it justice when we tell you how bizarre it was up until this point. But then it got MORE bizarre.

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The Oquendo-Charr fight went to purse bids, but the group that won the bid (at a whopping $600,000) found that it could not raise or generate that kind of money, and could not place Charr’s purse into escrow (again, this is “long story short” style).

Then the WBA ordered another purse bid – an action that was aborted when a settlement was made with Charr’s promoters in Germany, who agreed to promote the fight AND escrow Oquendo’s purse money, which, incidentally, offered him a better financial deal than the first purse bid would.

But then Oquendo refused to sign the contract.

Your guess is as good as mine as to why. In a conversation I had with his then-attorney, it was explained to me that he did not want to incur further obligations to the group that had a promotional contract with him, and although that wasn’t opposed, that’s what he feared. That wasn’t necessarily a satisfying explanation.

At that point he was pretty much left out in the cold.

Truth be told, as he should have been.

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Oh, and then his co-promoter, who had also acted at one time as his attorney, joined the Charr camp.

I have been in and around boxing since 1982, and I can tell you that you just can’t make this stuff up.

I’m mentioning all of this because Oquendo popped up again during fight week, seeking an injunction to prevent the fight from happening and threatening to sue the WBA.

In the opinion of yours truly, he has no case, since he’d already been offered a contract for the fight and refused it.

And what I found interesting is that, in going through all the legal decisions, no court has ever ordered the WBA to do anything with regard to Oquendo, whose victories in court were strictly against Chagaev and his promoters.

So that, in effect, means that for whatever reason, the WBA bent over backwards, with no legal obligation, to accommodate him.

I have been kind of ambivalent on this, to be frank. At one point, going back about three years, Oquendo was supposed to fight Shannon Briggs. In fact, I even went to the press conference. But Briggs submitted to a test for banned substances and failed it, drawing a suspension and killing the fight.

That was the second time this kind of thing had happened to Oquendo, and I thought that at that juncture, maybe, in the interest of moving forward on this ersatz title, they should just give it to Oquendo and then give him 90 days to make a fight with a fellow ranked contender. They didn’t do that.

Then, when the purse bid for the Charr-Oquendo fight had supposedly been settled, and subsequently fumbled, I registered my own opinion with the WBA – that since Oquendo had actually contributed funds toward the 10% deposit on the purse bid (No,I hadn’t told you that before), he was actually a part of the promotional group and should have been disqualified from his title shot, because he was given a chance to follow through and failed.

Ultimately, given the opportunity to get EXACTLY what he wanted, he declined to put his name on the dotted line. And that should have been the last straw.

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Obviously, he didn’t stop the Bryan-Stiverne fight from going forward. So perhaps this winding road he’s been on, taking others with him along the way, has finally – and mercifully – come to a dead end.

As I inferred at the top, this story is a heck of a lot more complicated than what I just laid out.

And to think all of this trouble, all of this drama, has been played out over a fight no one ever gave a damn about.

That might explain all you need to know about how ridiculous it’s really gotten with boxing’s sanctioning bodies.