Let's face it, nearly every single world title fight that takes place is one other than the fight fans ideally want to see. There's a reason why iconic superfights have such a label in the first place, and why they're longed for and revisited for the rest of time.

By definition, they are a rarity. Fights between the two genuine best fighters alive in a given weight class are often a perfect storm of finances, animosity and timing.

But even standard fare world championship fights are dependent upon similar formula that also takes into account the decision-making of one of the four major sanctioning bodies. Although we romantically like to think of boxing as sport's purest meritocracy once the bell rings, the mechanisms are extremely subjective nearly every step of the way.

If that wasn't the case, then every single sanctioning body's rankings would be identical. Even the results of the fights themselves, unless there is a knockout, are dependent upon the viewpoints and inherent biases of the judges assigned to the task that night. As for which fighters are given the most resources and maneuvered into the positions for those fights? They're also at the mercy of the whimsy of promoters and ultimately, fans' desire.

All of this means that sometimes, world title challengers can come from out of nowhere. Sometimes they're people you don't feel deserve the opportunity, or people you haven't heard of whatsoever.

Earlier this year, Ye Joon Kim, two fights removed from a loss to the 14-9 Rob Diezel, emerged from the Korean club circuit to face arguably the world's best fighter in Naoya Inoue. Last week Jake Paul, whose career began initially seemingly in an alternate boxing universe involving fellow influencers, was ranked No. 14 by the WBA at cruiserweight and could very well find himself fighting for a 200-pound title.

Boxing has the ability to produce underdogs and unusual stories in a way that other sports cannot. While the sport's lack of barriers of entry and fluid governance can lead to plenty of ills, it has also produced some remarkable tales in the form of unlikely world title challengers over the years.

One of boxing's forever recordholders, the best anyone can do is match Pete Rademacher's feat of challenging for the world heavyweight title in his professional debut (with some looser sanctioning Francis Ngannou could have made that claim too).

In 1956, Rademacher won the Olympic gold medal at heavyweight, but in the midst of his elite amateur days, was doing two other things: becoming a successful businessman and plotting his move to the professional ranks.

For two-and-a-half years, Rademacher pitched various wealthy folks, boxing dignitaries and state commissioners on his idea of turning pro against the world champion. Eventually, he found the right recipe of backers and governors to make his dream reality.

He linked up with Georgia businessman Mike Jennings, who gathered 22 donors to collect $250,000 to offer Floyd Patterson, and another $100,000 to put in escrow in the event Rademacher actually won and triggered a rematch.

Rademacher and Jennings formed a company called Youth Unlimited, a proto Boy Scouts-type company, registered as Unlimited Enterprises, which served as the bout's promoter, sanctioned by his home state of Seattle's commission, the country's only one that would do so. For his "purse," Rademacher collected a salary as vice president of the company.

Rademacher actually dropped Patterson in the second round, seemingly on the brink of a miracle, before getting knocked down six times, and once for good in the sixth.

"My sole concept was, I would knock out Floyd Patterson, milk it for all it's worth, then retire undefeated," Rademacher told The Associated Press in 1987. "Getting up was the biggest mistake Floyd ever made. Just think what the rematch would have made."

Before Nat Fleischer, founder of The Ring, declared Patterson-Rademacher "the greatest mismatch in the history of the sport," James J. Jeffries vs. Jack Munroe tended to be his reference point when it came to lopsided world title fights.

In 1902, Jeffries and Bob Fitzsimmons were on an exhibition tour promoted by Clark Ball where the pair would select locals, in this case in Butte, Montana, to try their chances against them. If one lasted four rounds with one of the champs, they would earn $250. At the time of the tour, Munroe happened to be in the area, working in the mines.

Munroe, who was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, hadn't boxed in two years since winning his local Olympic Club title back home, got word of the event and began training 10 days prior, putting on a pair of gloves for the first time in more than 24 months.

Munroe beat out a series of applicants and was given a go at Jeffries. Munroe went the four-round distance and rewarded with $250, but according to newspaper reports also knocked down Jeffries before being awarded the unofficial decision by the referee that night.

Ball immediately became Munroe's manager, but not before being knocked out by a left hook by his former client Fitzsimmons. Once his head cleared, he fielded a near-immediate offer from Tom Sharkey to face Munroe, as Sharkey told the papers he'd already gone on a run around Central Park to begin training for the showdown.

After a handful of fights lasting no more than four rounds, Munroe only needed six of them before closing Sharkey's eyes completely in a February 1904 fight to unthinkably set up a crack at the heavyweight champion.

Jeffries would have his final great night in the ring, battering Munroe until a left hook finished him in Round 2. Jeffries wouldn’t fight again for six years, when unseated by Jack Johnson in one of the most historically significant events in the United States.

Munroe would go on to make his own history, incorporating and founding the town of Elk Lake, Ontario, reportedly being the first Canadian soldier to set foot in France during World War I where he was the subject of erroneous death reports after being shot through his right shoulder. Before then, he became a successful professional wrestler.

"Unlikely" can be quantified in many ways when it comes to world title challengers, be it due to circumstance, lack of experience or pedigree. Circumstances don't come much tougher than fleeing North Korea, and experience and pedigree can't get much lower than zero.

"Defector Girl Boxer" Hyun-Mi Choi won the WBA women's featherweight title over Xu Chun Yan in her professional debut.

Choi's father was a successful businessman in North Korea who fled in 2004, with Hyun-Mi and her mother following not long after. While in North Korea, Choi was recruited to be a boxer in part because of her physical stature, owed to her better nourishment in a well-off household. The idea was for her to represent the country at the 2008 Olympics, but four years prior she was in South Korea, embarking upon an amateur career there instead.

After 18 amateur bouts, which netted her roughly $42 in national team stipends, Choi turned pro. Her decision may have been financially motivated, but she made clear in an interview with CNN that continuing on the Asian circuit as an amateur would have put her in an impossible ethical quandary as well.

"Thinking about fighting against those North Korean boxers makes me go blank," said Choi. "They have to win the gold medal to eat and make a living. I could be the reason they lose their job."

In the weeks leading up to Christmas 1999, director Ron Shelton and actors Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas were making the rounds promoting their new film "Play It To The Bone."

The crux of the film is that two aging fighters and pals, Harrelson and Banderas, are given the opportunity to step in and fight one another on a Mike Tyson undercard on about 10 hours' notice. They could have never imagined that seven days prior to the film's theatrical release something along the same lines, except even wackier, happened in real-life boxing.

On Dec. 18, 1999, Jose Lopez and Alejandro Montiel were scheduled to face off for the WBO flyweight title. Garcia was a 19-1 contender who had fought mostly in Los Angeles, and was curious to watch the fight live, in part to scout two men he hoped to fight one day.

That day would turn out to be … that day.

Montiel started "experiencing numbness," according to Los Angeles Times reports, and promoter Ricardo Maldonado was desperate to save the fight. At some point during the day, Maldonado spotted Garcia in the venue leaving the concession stand with a soda and a candy bar. He contacted his manager Frank Espinoza, who didn't know Garcia was there, and offered $10,000 for the fight.

Garcia hadn't really been training and reportedly weighed about 11 pounds above the flyweight limit, so $10,000 didn’t sound worth it, but the offer of $28,000 was enough for more than just a few extra Christmas gifts. To take the fight, he'd first need a few gifts — an entire wardrobe of boxing equipment since he had none. He borrowed a cup, trunks, boots and gloves and formed a mouthpiece using hot concession stand coffee, stepped in and won a unanimous decision and the WBO title.

Certainly the most famous last-second opponent-turned-title-challenger is "The Dough Boy," who famously got a crack at Tommy Morrison and his WBO heavyweight title in 1993 after drinking a few beers in the crowd.

Tomashek's journey from concession stand to the ring wouldn't be quite as successful as Garcia's was, but significantly better remembered. For one, it was a heavyweight title bout and aired on ESPN, but Tomashek himself had already become a folk hero character even before his fateful night in Kansas City, Missouri.

A month prior, Tomashek was the subject of an ESPN "Outside The Lines" segment, showing him at his day job at the ShopKo Distribution Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The associate producer of the segment, Paul Dunn, would tell the Green Bay Press-Gazette "of all the sports people I've met, he was the most pleasant, the most unpretentious and the most outgoing."

When Morrison's original opponent, Rocky V co-star Mike Williams, pulled out of the bout after finagling an extra $25,000 out of promoters at the last second and then retreating to his hotel for "more massage treatment," the plug was pulled and Tomashek was in.

At some point in the night, Williams' erratic behavior had probably written reality on the wall for organizers, as Tomashek had put the pints down and was warming up even before Williams went back to his hotel.

The 35-10 journeyman gave a theatrical, if not spirited effort before being stopped in the fourth. His minutes of fame would indeed extend about as long as he lasted in the ring, as he enjoyed a nice round of late night show appearances and, of course, lifelong infamy.

In 1975, the light flyweight class (108 pounds) was officially launched, with Franco Udella winning the inaugural WBC title bout via disqualification over Valentin Martinez.

Italy's Udella was ordered to face Rafael Lovela for the title, but a month prior to their scheduled bout, the manager said his fighter had a fever and would vacate his title as a result.

Lovera would be given another opponent to fight for the title, the great Luis Estaba, a man proving more than deserving of a vacant title shot. As for Lovera, questions swirled as to why he was not only given the opportunity but mandated as challenger by the WBC. Lovera had never taken part in a professional bout.

The head of the Paraguayan Boxing Union, Don Oscar Aquino Vargas was close friends with WBC founder Jose Sulaiman, and had reportedly been instrumental in convincing him to create the weight class in the first place. As the lore goes, the assumption: it was for Pastor Azuaga, the Panamanian amateur legend, to fight for a world title in the pros.

Azuaga was reportedly in hot water with the Boxing Union at that point, so Lovela — who had beaten him in the amateurs, but had lost most of their bouts against one another — became the chosen one instead.

Whether everyone involved in the bout actually knew Lovera was making his debut or not remains unclear based on contemporary reporting, but regardless that career would end less than 12 minutes after the opening bell. Estaba knocked him out in the fourth round and Lovera would never fight again.

"I was disappointed because when I returned on the plane, they paid me less than half of what they promised me, and I even think they drugged me for that fight. I returned to Paraguay and never stepped into a ring again," Lovera told ABC Sports Paraguay in 2004.

Lovera is remembered as the first Paraguayan world title challenger, and alongside Arturo Mayan, Joves De La Puz and Joko Arter, has the dubious honor of being one of the few to retire 0-1 after one world title fight.

But the man most expected to receive at the very least the national footnote Lovera enjoyed simply faded further into obscurity.

"They left me in the field of forgetting and the world of nothing," Azuaga said, according to Laurence Blair in a 2017 story for of Delayed Gratification, the Slow Journalism Magazine.

The previous names were unlikely challengers because of, among other things, some good fortune and unusual circumstances that worked to their benefit.

In the case of Quiroz, he had to navigate his way out of the boxing purgatory that is the upside down record. After starting his career 6-0 in his native Dominican Republic, Quiroz fell to 6-8 during a streak including defeat by an early career Sugar Baby Rojas.

After scoring three more wins, and struggling to a draw with the 1-3-1 Orlando Maestre, Quiroz found himself in a WBA light flyweight title bout against Lupe Madera, which he won via ninth-round knockout, sending his opponent into retirement.

While some believe Quiroz was 9-10-1 at the time of the bout, BoxRec lists Quiroz as 9-8-1 when the fight occurred.

If the former is true — and as thorough as BoxRec's record keeping efforts are, it is very much plausible that reports of 1970s Latin American 108-pounders are incomplete — then Quiroz has the distinction of winning a world title with a losing record. But even if that isn't the case, winning a world title at 9-8 would be nearly impossible in the modern boxing landscape.

But as Quiroz and the others on this list have illustrated, absolutely nothing is fully impossible in boxing.