Ratings argument starter :)
Posted: 08 Oct 2013, 22:33
For about five or six years now I've been working on a boxing strategy game where the players would manage fighters. I think it will be fun if I ever get it programmed, it's pretty fun as a board game but would really be more exciting as an online game.
Regardless, the ratings have gone through lots of changes over the years to hone it, in fact the last few changes are happening now to the offensive ratings, and I think they are pretty solid. I spent a lot of time in baseball stats so I took sort of a sabrmetric view to boxing, which I know a lot of folks don't like. :)
But basically the ratings are objective not subjective in their essence.
I won't go too far into them cause it's boring how I do it and what I'm sure everyone wants to do is argue over them and pick them apart. There are numbers for defense, stamina, offense, power, etc and then a number for skill. The skill number is sort of a shorthand for the better fighter, in the way that maybe people would use OPS for baseball. All I've shown here are the "skill" numbers. Of course the other numbers greatly influence the fight and the "skill" number really only means something if everything else is equal. Still I thought they were fun to look at.
So with the newest formulas I've now rated 29 heavyweights. I've tried not to do guys who fought also at light heavy (with Jack Johnson being the exception) and generally except for Dempsey and Marciano I've tried to do guys who fought at over 200 pounds. By no means are these the best 29 HW's of all time, although a lot of the great ones are here, some of the others are just guys I did because they were fun. Also I tried to only do guys who fought mostly 10 round and longer fights because I'm only showing the skill number so if they have different fight length levels then all things aren't equal.
To explain the ratings each fighter has "fight points" (FPTS)which are the weighted value of their fights. Each one also has a "skill rating" (AVG) which is an average of how they did in the fights. The skill rating is on a 0-10 scale. If you multiply the two together you get a "total points" (TPTS).
Now some guys don't have great career numbers but they reached a high peak. So I've included high peaks at the side, I've considered any two consecutive years over 9.0 as a peak. The only exception was for Foreman who just missed 9.0 in 1974 but it seemed silly to say Foreman never had a high peak.
Anyway here are the numbers of the first 29 guys and I'll post some more comments.
1) Disclaimers-- The other stats really do effect the fighter greatly so this is not me saying this is the order they would be ranked. Most of these fighters scored in my mind about how one would think in the other categories except for maybe Bob Baker and Harry Wills who scored below where I would have thought of in their other ratings.
2) Similarity-- I thought it was very interesting doing this how much alike in their careers that two pairs were. One was Sonny Liston-George Foreman, very similar careers and very similar numbers all across the board. Same thing for Tommy Morrison and Luis Firpo.
3) Ali-- I know the Ali haters will ridicule this, but by the numbers he is just the best. Believe me I'd love to sit here and say that Joe Louis was better, but in the end no matter how you look at it Ali fought everyone and beat everyone.
4) Peak Overlaps-- There were some overlaps in peak periods of these fighters, and so I thought it would be interesting to see if they met, and of course most of them did.
The overlaps were
1919- Harry Wills and Jack Dempsey--- of course they never met.
1963-Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali--- they meet in '64 and Liston is forced out of his peak.
1970-71 Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali---they meet in '71 of course and later in '74 and '75
1974-76 George Foreman and Muhammad Ali---Rumble in the Jungle '74
1980-81 Larry Holmes and Gerry Cooney---they meet in '82 and Cooney is forced out of his peak
1997-99 Lennox Lewis an Mike Tyson---they don't meet until 2002 when Tyson is out of his 2nd peak
5) Thoughts on Wills and Dempsey--- Dempsey should have fought him he probably would have won, as I understand it that talk was in 1921 or 1922 and Wills started declining rather quickly in the 20's. Even Wills-Dempsey 1919 I'd give Dempsey the nod by a hair, but Wills 1915-1918 would have massacred Dempsey.
Anyway, have fun ripping it apart :) I think most of you will enjoy the game when I'm done (if I ever get done!) even if you bitch about the ratings.
Regardless, the ratings have gone through lots of changes over the years to hone it, in fact the last few changes are happening now to the offensive ratings, and I think they are pretty solid. I spent a lot of time in baseball stats so I took sort of a sabrmetric view to boxing, which I know a lot of folks don't like. :)
But basically the ratings are objective not subjective in their essence.
I won't go too far into them cause it's boring how I do it and what I'm sure everyone wants to do is argue over them and pick them apart. There are numbers for defense, stamina, offense, power, etc and then a number for skill. The skill number is sort of a shorthand for the better fighter, in the way that maybe people would use OPS for baseball. All I've shown here are the "skill" numbers. Of course the other numbers greatly influence the fight and the "skill" number really only means something if everything else is equal. Still I thought they were fun to look at.
So with the newest formulas I've now rated 29 heavyweights. I've tried not to do guys who fought also at light heavy (with Jack Johnson being the exception) and generally except for Dempsey and Marciano I've tried to do guys who fought at over 200 pounds. By no means are these the best 29 HW's of all time, although a lot of the great ones are here, some of the others are just guys I did because they were fun. Also I tried to only do guys who fought mostly 10 round and longer fights because I'm only showing the skill number so if they have different fight length levels then all things aren't equal.
To explain the ratings each fighter has "fight points" (FPTS)which are the weighted value of their fights. Each one also has a "skill rating" (AVG) which is an average of how they did in the fights. The skill rating is on a 0-10 scale. If you multiply the two together you get a "total points" (TPTS).
Now some guys don't have great career numbers but they reached a high peak. So I've included high peaks at the side, I've considered any two consecutive years over 9.0 as a peak. The only exception was for Foreman who just missed 9.0 in 1974 but it seemed silly to say Foreman never had a high peak.
Anyway here are the numbers of the first 29 guys and I'll post some more comments.
1) Disclaimers-- The other stats really do effect the fighter greatly so this is not me saying this is the order they would be ranked. Most of these fighters scored in my mind about how one would think in the other categories except for maybe Bob Baker and Harry Wills who scored below where I would have thought of in their other ratings.
2) Similarity-- I thought it was very interesting doing this how much alike in their careers that two pairs were. One was Sonny Liston-George Foreman, very similar careers and very similar numbers all across the board. Same thing for Tommy Morrison and Luis Firpo.
3) Ali-- I know the Ali haters will ridicule this, but by the numbers he is just the best. Believe me I'd love to sit here and say that Joe Louis was better, but in the end no matter how you look at it Ali fought everyone and beat everyone.
4) Peak Overlaps-- There were some overlaps in peak periods of these fighters, and so I thought it would be interesting to see if they met, and of course most of them did.
The overlaps were
1919- Harry Wills and Jack Dempsey--- of course they never met.
1963-Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali--- they meet in '64 and Liston is forced out of his peak.
1970-71 Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali---they meet in '71 of course and later in '74 and '75
1974-76 George Foreman and Muhammad Ali---Rumble in the Jungle '74
1980-81 Larry Holmes and Gerry Cooney---they meet in '82 and Cooney is forced out of his peak
1997-99 Lennox Lewis an Mike Tyson---they don't meet until 2002 when Tyson is out of his 2nd peak
5) Thoughts on Wills and Dempsey--- Dempsey should have fought him he probably would have won, as I understand it that talk was in 1921 or 1922 and Wills started declining rather quickly in the 20's. Even Wills-Dempsey 1919 I'd give Dempsey the nod by a hair, but Wills 1915-1918 would have massacred Dempsey.
Anyway, have fun ripping it apart :) I think most of you will enjoy the game when I'm done (if I ever get done!) even if you bitch about the ratings.