Explain to me why the world championship matters if Magnus isn’t playing!

So by that logic Fischer was World Champion from 1972 to his death.
He even successfully defended his title in 1992.

The point of being the defending champion of something is that you have to defend your championship.

Are you serious rn bro? It's like saying basket ball doesn't matter anymore since Lebron isn't playing.

Actually, there are a lot of fans who are like this. They worship their chosen idol, then when the idol retires they lose interest in the sport. Not unusual at all.

Well, Magnus should retire and problem solved. He's semi-retired already.

Sometimes underdogs win championships… doesn’t mean they’re better than everyone else who competed. It just means they performed better in this one event.

We see this time and time again where a world champion wins a sport or competition and then they lose the next year terribly.

bulbulbl

It doesn't matter in the sense of finding the best player, I think everyone knows that. FIDE have brought this on themselves by having the world championship cycle so extremely short, when it should be 4-6 years, not 2. Then the defending champion would usually have something to prove, even if it's just the margin of victory, as it stands it's just depending how lazy Carlsen wants to risk his preparation to be, and that's not good. Every 6 years I would have it, but FIDE are greedy and want money.

As an event you could say it stands by itself, it means something. Two players from different backgrounds with different styles, both have their fans. I think chess sometimes has a problem attracting people to games from anyone but the absolute best. With other sports people will gladly watch and be interested in local, regional and second-tier world class games. With chess unless MAGNUS is playing, or these days maybe one of the streamers, the vast majority of people don't seem to care. I'm sure most chess players don't even know the current champion of their country.