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FIDE apparently didn't think so. In June of 1975, they asked Fischer
to play Karpov _as World Champion_. Fischer's refusal to play that
match -- as he and everyone else knew -- had the _effect_ of making
Karpov World Champion. There are plenty of reasons for criticizing
Evans, but harping on this semantic quibble is just making you look
silly. Well, sillier.

In 1991 we saw a new Karpov.

Some clouds had lifted from the scene, and there he was in his own words
talking not very differently on things that Western journalists, including
Evans, had mentioned. Perhaps he is the first W Ch to spontaneously admit
that he did things wrong as champion - stuff he was not proud of.

But the effect of other players on Karpov, who can be said to have an
artistic temperament to chess, was that he said he could never really get
excited [artistically] at the prospect of playing Kasparov - but Korchnoi
provided him a huge stimulus - and he quantified that, by saying something
like 85% of his creative energies.

He then continued on this theme, in Karpov on Karpov, to state that Fischer
would have been his greatest challenge, in the 90th percentiles.

That is an artistic tribute and a sincere one to Fischer-the-player.

Sure enough, after following Fischer round the world, the fateful moment
came when Fischer actually held the pen to sign the match agreement, but
fatally added one more issue to the array, that the title be called the
professional world chess championship. Apparently all else had been agreed
between the players - but Karpov said right then that they were never going
to buy that back in Moscow, and he knew the effort was doomed.

Why the Moscow/Fide would have baulked at adding one word to the title is
perhaps explained by the 40 years of pretence that Soviet GMs were not
state-supported professionals. Indeed, consciously admitted or not, I think
Fischer knew his condition would be the deal-breaker, and by then he was
sick of talking chess with anyone, East or West.

Far better if Fischer-the-player had continued to believe in pawns rather
than suffer the fate of the [self] abandoned celebrity.

Phil Innes