The WBA has been one of boxing’s most controversial sanctioning bodies for years but has not slowed down in the slightest as their latest WBA-sanctioned “world title” fight, held on May 2nd between Rolando Romero and Ryan Garcia, made CompuBox history for taking 3rd place for the fewest-thrown punches in a 12-round bout.

The WBA’s role in this debacle could not be more pronounced, as it was directly their decision to make the WBA “regular” welterweight (147 lbs) title available for the fight after they promoted the recent winner of the actual WBA world welterweight title, Jaron Ennis (34-0, 30 KO’s), to WBA “super” champion.

This wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment decision that the WBA made; it was a strategic choice borne out of speculatively the name recognition of both Rolando Romero (17-2, 13 KO’s) and Ryan Garcia (24-2, 20 KO’s), with the sanctioning body being capable of gaining more through their 3% purse fees than other available fighters.

Though there is a threshold to how much the WBA can take out of a purse ― with a fighter that earns $20,000,000 for instance forcing the WBA to take only $250,000 rather than $600,000, there are obvious benefits to having title fights between two prominent boxers.

Regardless of why the WBA made the choice of making Garcia and Romero becoming eligible for a world title fight, it was not a coincidence. By January 31st, neither fighter were ranked in the WBA’s welterweight rankings and were not in the position to fight for any title.

The announcement of the May 2nd card was made the week before the WBA’s update of their rankings, but by the next update held on February 28th, the WBA’s welterweight rankings would show a startling change; both Romero and Garcia ending up in the top 3 despite not having had a single fight at 147 lbs at that point.

The announcement of the WBA introducing the WBA “regular” title for the Romero-Garcia fight came roughly two months later in April but was far from a spontaneous decision as it likely had been in the works since both fighters were announced to face each other at welterweight.

Unfortunately, the records that Romero and Garcia broke by becoming 3rd in fewest-thrown punches in a 12-round fight perfectly reflects a “title” bout that should have never occurred in the first place. While a ranking at the bottom of the WBA’s 147-pound rankings would not have made much sense either, the WBA overplayed their hand by putting the two fighters in the top 3, confirming they preferred name recognition over actual competitiveness with neither fighter having even been welterweights until the announcement of their May 2nd fights signaled they would fight in the division.

While Rolando Romero had been in grasp of the WBA super lightweight (140 lbs) title and sanctioning bodies can often trump up former champions in their rankings when they move up and down, Romero lost the title last year to Isaac Cruz in a fight where he was stopped.

Garcia also didn’t deserve his ranking, coming off a win against Devin Haney last year that would be overturned after he failed his PED-tests. In his entire career, while Garcia had never actually challenged for a world title as he was disqualified from winning Devin Haney’s (32-0, 15 KO’s) WBC 140 lbs title last year for coming in overweight while his most notable bout against Gervonta Davis (30-0-1, 28 KO’s) in April of 2023 was not for any world title. Garcia therefore did not even slightly meet the same requirements as a former world champion to gain any privileged boost in the rankings.

This situation sums up the WBA perfectly; an organization that continues to negatively impact the sport in a plethora of ways, none more so than interrupting their otherwise efficient ranking system with inclusions of fighters that should not have been there in the first place.

And as the sanctioning body has shown in the recent past, this common trend where decisions are based on bias and corruption still shows no signs of fading anytime soon with the continued use of the WBA “regular” titles which only deteriorate competitiveness after two undeserving contenders put up a lackluster bout that made the history books.