Legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather has criticised the sport for having too many world title belts and has called on the sanctioning bodies to clean up their act.

The 43 year-old, who was a five-weight world champion, pointed to the four major organisations in the WBA, IBF, WBC and WBO, all of which have their own versions of the titles.

For example, the WBA have a ‘regular’, ‘super’ and often ‘interim’ world champion all in the same weight class.

And the WBC have recently developed a new concept called the ‘franchise’ title which has been handed out to some of the pound-for-pound best fighters such as Vasyl Lomachenko and Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.

"The WBC, the WBA, the IBF and the WBO, y’all have to clean this s*** up. Y’all have to clean this up," Mayweather told Showtime Sports’ YouTube channel.

"This is bad for boxing. Ain’t a such thing as no super champion. You guys are just taking extra money from all these fighters, getting extra money from sanctioning fees. And this goes for my company as well.

"We gotta clean this sport of boxing up. This s***, this don’t look good. When you look on TV now, everybody’s a champion. You see all these fighters posing with a belt.

"I don’t care if it’s Top Rank, if it’s Golden Boy [Promotions], if it’s Mayweather Promotions, if it’s PBC – there’s too many champions in the sport of boxing right now.

"Too many champions. It’s not a such thing as a super champion, not at all. And I’m not taking nothing away from no fighter. It’s too many belts."

Along with the four main sanctioning bodies, there is also the IBO which is seen as a less prestigious world title belt.

However, it is still often used for promotional purposes in big fights, so a Joshua fight is referred to as being for ‘four world title belts’ despite one of them being the IBO.

All these governing bodies pick up sanctioning fees from fighters when their belts are on the line, a factor many have pointed to as to the reason for there being so many titles.