“The sweet science,” A.J. Liebling observed, “is joined onto the past like a man’s arm to his shoulder.”

When Liebling penned those words, he was referring to the lineage of boxing’s heavyweight champions. It was a glorious line of succession revered by fight fans with the same emotion that British royalists embrace the monarchy.

John L. Sullivan … James J. Corbett … Bob Fitzsimmons … James Jeffries … Marvin Hart … Tommy Burns … Jack Johnson … Jess Willard … Jack Dempsey … Gene Tunney … Max Schmeling … Jack Sharkey … Primo Carnera … Max Baer … James Braddock … Joe Louis … Ezzard Charles … Jersey Joe Walcott … Rocky Marciano … Floyd Patterson … Ingemar Johansson … Patterson again … Sonny Liston … Muhammad Ali . ..

These men were gods with a common bond. “Fitzsimmons had been hit by Corbett,” Liebling wrote. “Corbett by John L. Sullivan; he by Paddy Ryan with the bare knuckles; and Ryan by Joe Goss, his predecessor, who as a young man had felt the fist of the great Jem Mace. It is a great thrill to feel that all that separates you from the early Victorians is a series of punches on the nose.”

Even when the heavyweight champion was a fighter of limited ability, he was still the heavyweight champion of the world.

Then world-sanctioning bodies began to proliferate and things got murky. But there was still a chain of command.

Joe Frazier … George Foreman … the return of Ali … Leon Spinks … Larry Holmes … Michael Spinks … Mike Tyson … James “Buster” Douglas … Evander Holyfield … Riddick Bowe … Holyfield again … Michael Moorer … George Foreman … followed by an interregnum with Lennox Lewis emerging as the true heavyweight champion of the world.

Sadly, that lineage no longer exists. There are now four heavyweight champions. In other words, the throne is vacant at present and will be for the foreseeable future. Greed and corruption have fragmented the crown.

The single most important thing that sports fans want is competition building to a meaningful championship.

Interest in a sport peaks during its championship season. That’s when even casual observers turn on their television sets, and lifelong fans are born. The National Football League has playoffs leading to the Super Bowl. Major League Baseball crests with the World Series. The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League follow similar formats. Golf captures the public imagination during the Masters and U.S. Open. Wimbledon captivates tennis fans.

The people who run boxing have managed to deprive the sport of its signature moment: a fight for the legitimate heavyweight championship of the world.

Other sports have suffered similar lapses. The World Series was cancelled due to labor strife in 1994. The National Hockey League has a smudge in the record book where the 2005 Stanley Cup playoffs should have been. But baseball and hockey quickly got their respective houses in order, as did golf and tennis after interruptions for world war.

Yet the powers that be in boxing continue to pursue selfish agendas without regard to the overall good of the sport. The irony is that in the long run, their greed costs them money. Boxing’s dwindling fan base and the lack of lucrative network television contracts trace in part to the absence of a true heavyweight champion. How much interest would the Olympics generate if there were four gold medalists in four separate versions of the 100-meter dash?

Boxing will not regain its status as a major sport until there’s a legitimate universally-recognized heavyweight champion of the world. Until that time, a gaping void will exist where glory was once found.

And in the end, the boxers (at least, those who are genuinely talented) will suffer the most. The ultimate goal of any athlete in any sport is to become a true world champion. An entire generation of heavyweights is being deprived of the opportunity to achieve that goal.

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Last June at Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn’s Paulie Malignaggi fought heroically but took a horrific beating at the hands of Miguel Cotto en route to a 12-round decision loss in a World Boxing Organization 140-pound title bout. On Friday, February 17, Malignaggi (21–1, 5 KOs) returns to the ring to face Edner Cherry (21–4–2, 10 KOs) at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 34th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan.

What did the Cotto fight take out of Paulie? The guess here is that Malignaggi will rebound to win a 10-round decision over Cherry.

The featured undercard bout pits junior-middleweight Sechew Powell (20-1, 12 KOs) against Ishe Smith (18-1, 8 KOs). This is a fight for boxing purists since both men are counterpunchers, but it’s an intriguing matchup and a toss-up fight. Smith gained a measure of fame two years ago as one of the competitors on the TV reality show “The Contender.”

Tickets are priced at $300, $200, $125, $75, and $40 and are available on site or by calling DiBella Entertainment at 212-947-2577.

thauser@rcn.com