Why ABC rankings are such a joke

[boxing_rocks]

IBF updated their rankings. Do they not understand how ridiculous this looks? Murata, Lemieux, Culcay and 5 boxers nobody heard of (Szeremeta, Wojcicki, Falcao, Quigley, Rolls) are all above Golovkin who has only one questionable loss and has a win over their current champion. How the f*ck did they come up with such nonsense?

1 NOT RATED
2 Jack Culcay Ecuador
3 Sergiy Derevyanchenko Ukraine
4 Kamil Szeremeta Poland
5 David Lemieux Canada
6 Ryota Murata Japan
7 Patrick Wojcicki Germany
8 Esquiva Falcao Brazil
9 Gerome Quigley United States
10 Steve Rolls Canada
11 Gennady Golovkin Kazakhstan

[verlichte]

IBF updated their rankings. Do they not understand how ridiculous this looks? Murata, Lemieux, Culcay and 5 boxers nobody heard of (Szeremeta, Wojcicki, Falcao, Quigley, Rolls) are all above Golovkin who has only one questionable loss and has a win over their current champion. How the f*ck did they come up with such nonsense?

1 NOT RATED
2 Jack Culcay Ecuador
3 Sergiy Derevyanchenko Ukraine
4 Kamil Szeremeta Poland
5 David Lemieux Canada
6 Ryota Murata Japan
7 Patrick Wojcicki Germany
8 Esquiva Falcao Brazil
9 Gerome Quigley United States
10 Steve Rolls Canada
11 Gennady Golovkin Kazakhstan

Don’t some of the organisations have specific rules to exclude title challengers and champions from rival governing bodies? Also, don’t the WBA & WBC also exclude fighters from their rankings who refuse to sign-up to their clean boxing programs?

Some organisations also hedge their bets, by looking at the rankings of other governing bodies to predict that a fighter like GGG is more likely to face Andrade than Danny Jacobs, because the ‘Miracle Man’ is already scheduled to face Canelo, so they rate other boxers above Golovkin to order final eliminators that can be realistically made – since they need to maintain the revenue stream of their sanctioning fees.

The one thing that annoys me is the amount of influence promoters have over the sports governing bodies, whereby unranked fighters suddenly become top-ten ranked contenders, simply because journeymen or anonymous names become opponents for top-tier high-profile fighters (i.e. Main Events & Top Rank’s relationship with the WBO; and the WBC’s relationship with the PBC).

The rankings of the sports’ governing bodies are terrible, but it's all about business, rather than sporting achievements and ability.

[Ruthless-RKO]

TBH. IBF rankings are the worst. Their mandatory challengers are the worst 90% of the time.

Only good thing about IBF is they are strict and enforce their rules.

[Lackeos]

ABC rankings are pretty much a ranking of who has paid the most sanctioning fees to that organization. If you aren't paying fees to fight for their various national, international, and youth belts; they aren't going to rank you, regardless of your achievements.

[candyslim]

I find it sickening the way the way these abysmal organisations conduct their affairs. They only exist at all because the sport takes notice of them. If fighters or their people refused to pay sanctioning fees or recognize their authority then the fokkers would all go out of business and maybe from the ashes would rise a new authority that realized that the first order of business would be, and would always be, to maintain their integrity and to serve the interests of the sport knowing that doing so would ensure their solvency and their right to exist .

Of course it'll never happen and you don't have to look far to realize why not ... "Ooh look pwitty shiny trinket to put around my waist, I wannit" (WBZ Interim regular silver Northern-hemisphere Super-lightmiddleweight title)

[Lennox]

Yet when someone comes up with a credible ranking system with integrity someone will diss it because they think a boxer is one or two places lower than they should be. www.premierboxingorganisation.com/heavyweight-200

[boxing_rocks]

ANY automated rankings are better than putting arbitrary fighters into arbitrary positions which is what IBF seems to be doing.

[oogiebe]

ANY automated rankings are better than putting arbitrary fighters into arbitrary positions which is what IBF seems to be doing.

x2. That's why I first reference BoxRec. The alphabet rankings are incomplete at best; lacking in integrity at worse.

[KiwiRider]

ABC rankings are pretty much a ranking of who has paid the most sanctioning fees to that organization. If you aren't paying fees to fight for their various national, international, and youth belts; they aren't going to rank you, regardless of your achievements.

But then that contradicts the original post re; GGG.
If they get a % of the purse as well as the regular sign up fees, then the top money spinner is GGG

[candyslim]

ANY automated rankings are better than putting arbitrary fighters into arbitrary positions which is what IBF seems to be doing.

Nothing arbitrary about it Rocks: Is Sir looking for the number one slot, or if top ten will suffice we can slip you in at number nine for a very reasonable fee? There again if you are really on a budget, number fourteen is looking particularly er, fluid at the moment and we can do you a quite exceptional deal on that.

[candyslim]

Yet when someone comes up with a credible ranking system with integrity someone will diss it because they think a boxer is one or two places lower than they should be. www.premierboxingorganisation.com/heavyweight-200

It's way better than anything produced by the alphabet mafia but I'm very happy with BoxRec's. They're not perfect but I like the fact they are (apart from the devising of the system itself, and making organic improvements to the formula) uncontaminated by human opinion and bias

[oogiebe]

Yet when someone comes up with a credible ranking system with integrity someone will diss it because they think a boxer is one or two places lower than they should be. www.premierboxingorganisation.com/heavyweight-200

It's way better than anything produced by the alphabet mafia but I'm very happy with BoxRec's. They're not perfect but I like the fact they are (apart from the devising of the system itself, and making organic improvements to the formula) uncontaminated by human opinion and bias

At least they rank every fighter!

[Paci]

Not strange that most fighters career are bullied up as storylines an not that they are moving up by beating other contenders for a shot. Some do, but mostley everybody are getting "tests" along the way. And showing of their rankings that are more or less BS and who the "champion" might fight next is more on how pulls the best numbers. So strange and weird, but then again it is a bloody sport and show business both in one. And Organisations are more or less helping create this storylines and getting payed for supplying the belt and rating.

Love this sport, and hate how it works against everybody who works their ass of for a belt.

[candyslim]

@ Oogie : Currently active, yes which I believe means has fought in the last year. I've no time for orgs who just rank the top ten. Back in the day I loved that Boxing Illustrated used to publish a monthly top fifty.

@ Paci : Amen brother.

[oogiebe]

@ Oogie : Currently active, yes which I believe means has fought in the last year. I've no time for orgs who just rank the top ten. Back in the day I loved that Boxing Illustrated used to publish a monthly top fifty.

@ Paci : Amen brother.

that was my magazine of choice for years.

[candyslim]

Yep me too. Boxing News every week. Boxing World too while it ran, and B.I. and The Ring every month. Cost me a small fortune, I had to go and get a job

[stevekrazy]

To make matters worse, Gerome Quigley is a 35 year-old who has fought at 147 for several years now

[stevekrazy]

To make matters worse, Gerome Quigley is a 35 year-old who has fought at 147 for several years now

[Lackeos]

ABC rankings are pretty much a ranking of who has paid the most sanctioning fees to that organization. If you aren't paying fees to fight for their various national, international, and youth belts; they aren't going to rank you, regardless of your achievements.

But then that contradicts the original post re; GGG.
If they get a % of the purse as well as the regular sign up fees, then the top money spinner is GGG

There are exceptions to many rules. The Golovkin example is a rather impressive exception. My explanation is still pretty accurate in the vast majority of cases. Hard to imagine why they would demote Golovkin so low unless they were retaliating for something they're mad at Golovkin about.

[Lackeos]

Yet when someone comes up with a credible ranking system with integrity someone will diss it because they think a boxer is one or two places lower than they should be. www.premierboxingorganisation.com/heavyweight-200

It's way better than anything produced by the alphabet mafia but I'm very happy with BoxRec's. They're not perfect but I like the fact they are (apart from the devising of the system itself, and making organic improvements to the formula) uncontaminated by human opinion and bias

At least they rank every fighter!

Yeah. If you want highly objective, though flawed, rankings of at least the top 100 fighters, then you're not going to do any better than Boxrec or the IBO. If you want somewhat accurate (but still flawed) subjective rankings of the top 15 fighters, then there's The Ring, ESPN, sometimes the Boxrec forum rankings, and that thing Lennox keeps plugging.

Of course, when I'm in the middle of an argument with someone, then they tend to think that their own personal rankings are absolute gospel from the top all the way to the bottom. So I guess if you need an absolutely perfect ranking, you should ask Joe Schmoe with the humongous ego; because he seems to be infallible.