FanHouse ChrisJohn

On Saturday night, three fights of interest will transpire in the superbantamweight and featherweight divisions.

Puerto Rico's WBO superbantamweight (122-pounds) champion, Juan Manuel Lopez (pictured left) and WBA featherweight (126) king Yuriorkis Gamboa (middle) will be involved in two of them at the WaMu Theatre in New York's Madision Square Garden, with Mexican-born 126-pounder, Israel Vazquez (right) being in the third at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.

Depending on the results, any of the three boxers could soon wind up in the ring opposite each other.

Cuban-born featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa (15-0, 13 knockouts) will go after his sixth straight knockout when he defends his WBA title against Panama's Whyber Garcia (22-6, 15 KOs) on Oct. 10 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

The clash of 126-pounders will take place on the undercard of a main event featuring another rising star and potential opponent for Gamboa - Juan Manuel Lopez. The 26-year-old, Puerto Rican super bantamweight (122 pounds) (26-0, 24 KOs) will put his WBO crown on the line against Rogers Mtagwa (26-12-2, 18 KOs).

"I do not want to lose focus in preparation for this fight, because I know that without winning this fight I can't get to the bigger fights, with Juan Manuel Lopez being one of them," Gamboa said.

Despite big nights for the sport like we had on Saturday night, we're constantly hearing that boxing is a dying sport. Two of the biggest reasons for that are that no one can keep the weight classes straight and no one can keep the champions straight.

Ring Magazine deserves great credit for attempting to change that by establishing clear-cut criteria for determining its own champions, but I have two problems with the way Ring does things. The first is that the magazine ranks fighters in 17 different weight classes. That's too many. And the second is that the Ring ratings have so many vacancies at the top tthat only six fighters can be called Ring Magazine champions. That's too few.

So below is my attempt to list boxing's legitimate champions, using only the sport's eight traditional weight classes.

By ramping up their promotional efforts for the Sept. 19 Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez pay-per-view fight, some might say that HBO and Golden Boy Promotions are going old school. The fight will be shown at 170 movie theaters across the country and available in over 350,000 hotel rooms. Couple that with what seems like an aggressive usage of the Internet, mobile phones and social networking tools to promote the fight, and it's safe to say that they are doing everything in their power to make this event available to as many people as possible.

That's good news for boxing fans. Even better news is that they are finally using a mega-fight to spotlight some fresh, new talent to the masses. So while all those promotional efforts might be effective for one particular fight, the decision to stack this event with a solid undercard may prove to be the smartest decision HBO and Golden Boy ends up making.

Boxing has a hard time attracting new fans for many reasons. Two of the biggest are that no one can keep the weight classes straight and no one can keep the champions straight. Below is my attempt to fix that, listing the legitimate champions in each of the eight traditional weight classes.