It’s understandable if other news drowned out the fact that the May 2 fight between Ryan Garcia and Rolando Romero will somehow be for the WBA’s vacant, secondary welterweight title.

The initial reporting came amid the whirlwind and whiplash associated with a number of announcements related to Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and his potential opponents in 2025. And boxing’s headlines have continued to be dominated by other storylines.

This past week alone, our attention has been on the Gervonta Davis-Lamont Roach Jnr controversy; the Garcia-Romero tripleheader being in Times Square; the creation of a boxing league involving Alalshikh, UFC head honcho Dana White, and the parent company of the UFC and WWE; and the third match between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano headlining on Netflix this summer.

But when the WBA released its most recent rankings update, there Garcia and Romero were, positioned at No. 2 and No. 3 at welterweight, even though they were previously unranked at 147lbs just one month before. 

Romero wasn’t rated anywhere near that high at 140lbs either. The WBA had him as its No. 8 junior welterweight as of January, an understandable placement given that Romero had lost the WBA title to Isaac Cruz in March 2024, and his only ring appearance since was a unanimous decision over the unheralded, unranked 16-1-1 Manuel Jaimes in September.

Garcia was completely unrated by the WBA for the past year. He was last ranked in January 2024, when he slotted in as No. 4 at junior welterweight. Once Garcia signed to challenge Devin Haney for the WBC belt, the WBA pulled him from its list. Garcia’s continued absence was likely the consequence of his suspension after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug following his overturned win over Haney in April 2024. (Garcia also came in massively overweight, and intentionally so, for that bout.)

Garcia and Romero being back in the WBA’s rankings, and being ranked so highly, is sadly not a surprise. Not in this sport, not with any of the major sanctioning bodies. And not with this particular one. The WBA is once again being the WBA.

The WBA is far from the only sanctioning body to have one undeserving fighter in a title match, never mind both of them. And they are not the only sanctioning body to have unnecessary trinkets on top of their main titles – this bauble is their secondary so-called “regular” belt, while Eimantas Stanionis is the WBA’s primary titleholder at welterweight.

But when it comes to having an unnecessary amount of titles, the WBA has long been the worst.

This isn’t even counting the various other WBA belts that exist today, including Gold, North American, Latin American, Pan-African, Oceanic, Continental, Continental Americas, Continental Europe, Continental Gold, Continental Latin America, Continental USA, International, Intercontinental, and Asia titles. Most of these belts are seemingly there so boxers and managers can pay to curry favor with the sanctioning body; the WBA would say (and has said) that these myriad titles, meaningless to the rest of us, are meaningful opportunities for the fighters. 

The WBA used to be much more flagrant than it is now. By the end of 2015, it had 42 titleholders – super, regular and interim – among the 17 weight classes, an average of more than two per division. Under pressure, the WBA announced a plan to reduce that ridiculous number. 

There was actually some progress. By the end of 2016, there were 32 titleholders, though there also were still seven weight classes with three titleholders apiece. The number of titleholders dropped to 24 by the end of 2017 but then reversed course, increasing to 30 titleholders by the end of 2018, 36 titleholders by the end of 2019, and 41 titleholders by the end of 2020. All that progress had been undone.

So when WBA President Gilberto Mendoza said in mid-2021, “We will reduce titles permanently,” it was understandable if you were skeptical.

“That flexibility we’ve had with championships, we will phase it out progressively,” Mendoza told ESPN’s Salvador Rodríguez at the time. “I will focus on the fact that maybe there won’t be multiple champions [in a single division] anymore. That’s something that fans have requested. ... I feel that we provide more opportunities with multiple titles. However, I understand that fans are very important.

“I know that I have said it before [on] multiple occasions, and I haven’t been able to keep my promise. I’ll do it now, though. I’m saying this with my feet on the ground and after assessing financials, after assessing the situation and all the controversies. Besides, this measure will also make things easier for the association, from a legal conflict standpoint. I’m not saying that I will keep a single champion, though, but that’s the way I'll operate with most divisions.”

But indeed, by the end of 2021, the WBA no longer had any interim titleholders, and 27 men had the primary or secondary belts. That number was 23 at the end of 2022, 20 at the end of 2023, and 24 at the end of 2024.

Right now, there are 26 WBA titleholders. The interim belts are back, but there is only one weight class with three titleholders: junior middleweight, where Terence Crawford is the primary titleholder; Yoenis Tellez has the interim belt; and Jermell Charlo, who hasn’t fought in the division in nearly three years and hasn’t fought at all in 17 months, is designated as the “champion in recess.”

In comparison, the WBC has 24 titleholders, the WBO has 21 and the IBF has 15. (For the sake of an apples-to-apples comparison, we’re not including the bridgerweight division, which the WBC introduced in 2020 and the WBA added in 2023.)

All of which is to say that the WBA is doing better. Yet it could not help but give in to temptation with Garcia-Romero. The WBA’s regulations call for both fighters to pay sanctioning fees equaling 3% of their purses, up to a maximum of $250,000 per person. Assuming that Garcia and Romero’s combined purses amount to more than $1.5 million – and that seems a fair assumption – then the show’s promoter must fork over another $25,000. 

If the winner of Garcia-Romero goes on to face the winner of its chief supporting bout between Haney and Jose Ramirez – or the winner of the undercard bout between Teofimo Lopez and Arnold Barboza – then the WBA will rake in more than $1 million just by adding this one unnecessary belt into the mix. That doesn’t include all of the other fees and expenses the WBA requires fighters, promoters and managers to pay.

The sport doesn’t need these extra belts. This fight doesn’t need this bauble to get our attention. But the WBA clearly survives, and thrives, because of them.

When Mendoza spoke in 2021 of “assessing financials,” it’s because these titles and all of its other belts remain a huge windfall.

At its convention in December, the WBA disclosed that two-thirds of its revenue – about $4 million out of $6.08 million – came from sanctioning fees, per my BoxingScene colleague Matt Christie. The WBA is also among the sanctioning bodies and promoters being sponsored by Alalshikh’s Riyadh Season entity, adding nearly half a million dollars to its coffers.

The sport’s power brokers will understandably go wherever the money is, and accommodate whomever is funding them. It is a symbiotic relationship. Various promoters have been described as having close relationships with different sanctioning bodies. They’re able to get their fighters title opportunities, which helps the promoters cash in on their investments, and those paydays are then parceled out back to the sanctioning bodies, mostly out of the fighters’ paychecks.

The state of boxing is rapidly changing. It’s uncertain what role the sanctioning bodies will play if the new boxing league grows beyond prospect- and contender-level fighters, if it begins to include top talent, if it creates its own championship (or recognizes only the Ring Magazine championship, given that the publication was purchased last year by Alalshikh).

One other sanctioning body belt will be on the line in Times Square: Lopez will defend his WBO title and the lineal and Ring Magazine championships against Barboza. The main criticism here is that Lopez is being rewarded with a big payday despite continuing to utter racist comments on social media and in interviews. Then again, boxing – including far too many boxing fans – has a long history of turning a blind eye to fighters’ misdeeds.

In the case of the main event, Garcia is being rewarded after his own shameful words and actions. Romero is being rewarded not despite misdeeds, but in spite of a lack of recent deeds. And the WBA is rewarding itself — a big event in the Big Apple, and a big bite being taken out of it.

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.