crusader wrote:stujones wrote:jessi wrote:Stujones, ok you have convinced me of a few points, however why would it be silly to have khan above Peterson right now ? you said yourself it was a controversial decision, ( just like the chisora/helenius result ) so why should a ranking be effected by it. And one more point on the world p4p list, I remember Roy jones jnr being number 1 and de la Hoya number 2 in the late 90's, de la Hoya fought and beat much better opposition, jones was number 1 for his sheer class and ability, it's not always who you beat but how you beat them
I think the Roy Jones ranking was based primarily on his manner of victories in key fights. There are some DLH non fans who think Oscar never won a true superfight against a guy at his prime at his weight devision..... Jones did (Toney).
Had DLH beaten Trinidad then a case might have been made for Jones to be ousted.... similarly had Trinidad beaten Hopkins - some people had Trinidad at #1 after beating Joppy.
If we rank fighters on who we think won fights then they would be all over the shop. We should go on the official decision. I saw some P4P lists on current scene that had Chad Dawson in the top ten and no mention of Hopkins, because after 2 rounds they made the judgement that Dawson was going to win. For me, the actual decision should hold the key..... close decision / controvesial decision should close the gap somewhat though (e.g. Clev and Bellew).
The optimal method of ranking fighters depends on one's conception of rankings. Do they reflect level of opposition, ability, or a balanced combination of the two?
The first conception is too simplistic for me; it fails to differentiate between justified decisions and egregious decisions, and what transpires in the ring is largely insignificant. The second conception fails to put things in perspective; a fighter may look highly impressive at one level, but ordinary at another. The third conception synthesizes the previous two and reduces the shortcomings of each.
My position is consistent with the last one. Rankings should take into consideration the quality of a fighter's opponents and how well they performed against those opponents--which reflects ability. A loss need not be detrimental if the losing fighter performed well in relation to the quality of their opponent. Robberies and excessively wide scores don’t accurately reflect how a fighter compares to others, but a relatively impressive losing effort can.
It follows from this position that formulating ratings largely on the basis of results may produce a high degree of consistency, but at the cost of validity, which in my opinion is the paramount aspect of rankings. Judges scorecards are often inaccurate or fail to tell the whole story, or both, and consequently rankings that are heavily based on results suffer in the same way.
Some good points Crusader, and maybe in the case of outright robberies I would agree.... but being honest how many decisions have you seen in which there is a 100% disagreement with the cards.
Sturm vs Macklin - many had Macklin winning, but some had it a draw and Sturm winning.
Khan vs Peterson - again seemed to be close to 50:50 in terms of who won this fight.
Helenius vs Chisora - possibly the closest one in terms of unanimous disagreement, but then the allegedly commentators went for Helenius.
Plus you get added to the debate, people at ringside vs people watching on TV.
I think on fights that can be interpreted either way, got to go with official card IMO.... take Froch after the Dirrell fight, now people know what I thought of those cards - but it seemed like many agreed that Froch did win (I would still argue it was a minority, but some definitely thought he won) - you simply had to rank Froch ahead of Dirrell and go with the experts who were there.
