Another thread - the "Bugner W 10 Jimmy Ellis" thread in the Boxing History forum - brought to my attention that the "Ring Magazine's Annual Ratings" page has several sets of heavyweight ratings attributed to the wrong issue of the magazine
I've been "collecting" heavyweight ratings from various sources (mags, organizations) for years and have them listed chronologically in a document. In the Bugner-Ellis thread mentioned above, a poster made a reference to an Ellis ranking in the "March 1974" issue of Ring, according to BoxRec. I had a look and noticed that the ratings listed on BoxRec were actually from the February 1974 issue. Then I noticed that the "March 1975" heavyweight ratings were actually from the February 1975 issue. Another poster scanned and posted several sets of Ring ratings from 1974; these perfectly matched what I had in my ratings document.
This prompted me to do some digging. What I discovered was that there is at least an 18 year streak, from 1960 to 1977 in which the heavyweight ratings are from a different issue than they're attributed to. I noticed some discrepancies in a few of the 1950s ratings, but I don't have enough back issues of Ring to correctly figure out which issue the ratings are from. Keep in mind that I only collect heavyweight ratings. I don't know if the other divisions are inaccurate as well. Here's what I found:
BoxRec says: --- Actually:
Feb 1960 issue --- March 1960 issue
Feb 1961 --- December 1960
Feb 1962 --- March 1962
Feb 1963 --- March 1963
Feb 1964 --- March 1964
March 1965 --- Feb 1965
March 1966 --- Feb 1966
March 1967 --- Feb 1967
March 1968 --- Feb 1968
March 1969 --- Feb 1969
March 1970 --- Feb 1970
March 1971 --- Feb 1971 and March 1971 have the same top 10 in the same order at heavyweight. I can't verify the issue date.
March 1972 --- Feb 1972
March 1973 --- Feb 1973
March 1974 --- Feb 1974
March 1975 --- Feb 1975
March 1976 --- Feb 1976
March 1977 --- Feb 1977
March 1978 --- Feb 1978 and March 1978 have the same top 10 in the same order at heavyweight. I can't verify the issue date.
March 1979 --- Feb 1979 and March 1979 have the same top 10 in the same order at heavyweight. I can't verify the issue date.
The ratings in the 1980s are from the issues they're attributed to.
These errors worry me. Several posters on various forums reference the "Ring Magazine's Annual Ratings" page and what they found there. The page is an excellent resource. The ratings, in the years I found the errors, are always within a month of the issue stated (except 1960), so they give people a reasonable picture of who was rated where at that time. But I've always assumed that BoxRec strives to collect and provide dead-on accurate data. How do we fix this?