By Sanjeev Shetty BBC Sport Online

Johnny Tapia did not seem bothered when he was stripped of his International Boxing Federation featherweight title.

Marco Antonio Barrera gave up his WBC title because of his continuing disgust with governing bodies.

These two rebels are set to fight each other on 2 November in a bout which will be shown on pay-per-view and will guarantee both men considerable money - even though no 'world title' is on the line.

And Lennox Lewis, who worked tirelessly to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, now only owns the WBC title because he refuses to be dictated to by the sport's rulers.

So the question is - does boxing really need world titles?

"World title belts are worth as much as the man who holds them - if you're Oscar de la Hoya, they are worth a lot of money," said Claude Abrams, editor of Boxing News.

Dominant

"If you're a lesser fighter, the belts will make you money. When you are an established fighter, it doesn't matter if you have a belt because everyone knows who you are."

The boxing world - and it is a narrowing band of people - know who the best are, but the casual observer probably does not have a clue.

Which is why Abrams was kind enough to give us his opinion on who deserves to be recognised as the best in their weight class.

Significantly, he could name only five divisions in which there was not a dominant champion.

That is a fairly encouraging state of affairs for world boxing - in recent years, there have been little more than a handful of outstanding champions.

If you consider that men such as Joe Calzaghe, Sugar Shane Mosley and Erik Morales are not on the list, it shows that there is still a lot of quality out there.

If more big name fighters vacate their titles - which is possible - then it is possible that many governing bodies may eventually become obsolete.

Which may be a good thing - boxing has seldom had less credibility than it has now and with one champion in each division, it may make things easier for new fans to understand.

But there is a flipside to all this.

As Abrams says, a limited boxer can make a great deal of money by playing the 'alphabet soup' game - fighting for any world title that comes along.

While boxing remains this convoluted, the general public will pay for a world title fight, whether it involves Anthony Farnell (WBU middleweight title-holder) or Bernard Hopkins (WBA, WBC and IBF middleweight champion).

Being the hard game that it is, does anyone have the right to say to a boxer that they cannot fight for a world title, no matter how spurious it is?