BoxRec

Ezzard wrote:John L, are you an accountant ?

It's a nice idea and an interesting and well executed plan. Does the list differ from how you might have imagined it? Foreman and Liston look a little too low for me but this sometimes happens when you rate in this kind of way.

What was the biggest surprise of your results totals?

Ezzard wrote:Just having another look and can't see Holyfield on the list?

Rory McCloskey wrote:ohh johnny.. bless you for putting jimmy on the list...


i think the system u used is quite creative and it came out with what seems to be an accurate assumption. top 7 in my midn are flawless... 8-9 are not my favorite, but i think its quite common to have them ranked there. well anyway i think the list is impressive and the results are accurate.

sharkeysboy wrote:John L. I kind of like what you did with that list. As a way of organizing ones thoughts and analyzing the data we have, it's useful. However, unlike baseball, boxing is not a stat heavy sport. So no mathematical formula could ever come close to being the final word on boxers because there's this thing that happens when two guys climb in there and start throwing punches. There are also so many variables that you can't measure. Bad decisions, varying levels of competition, different eras, pre-prime, post prime, fixed fights, racist exclusion, inactive champs and the trickiest of them all - the matchup. Some fighter we would never expect will beat Joe Louis in the fantasy tournament because his style turns out to be a nightmare for Louis. It seems aburd now, but Frazier was a strong favorite against Foreman and experts actally said that Frazier's style would bother Foreman!! Of course the exact opposite was true. Every contributor to this message board can come up with 20 similar examples. So you really never know. Everybody has an opinion hence this site that consumes so much of our time. But as far as measuring a champ's accomplishment in his own era your rating system is fun and educational.

The Great John L wrote:Sorry to start yet another thread about rating the HW champs, but this is slightly different. In previous threads I've avoided lisitng my ratings because I simply had not taken the time to actually think through how to really rank these guys. Rather than just put a list together, I setup a spreadsheet of all of the HW claimants in the gloved era (including John L) and applied a rating for each potential matchup. For this ranking I used a 5 point system that atempts to recognize the fact that one fight really doesn't determine who's better between 2 fighters, and that there is no one fighter that could have beaten every other fighter ALL the time.

Therefore I applied a 5 point ranking:

5 - the fighter wins essentially ALL of the matches
4 - the fighter wins the majority of the matches
3 - evenly matched, they pretty much split the matches
2 - the fighter loses the majority of the fights
1 - the fighter essentially loses ALL of the matches

For example if we match Joe Louis against Marvin Hart (remember him?), I would assign Louis a 5 and Hart a 1. Of course, there is always the rare opportunity when a matchup like this could result in an upset -- Hart headbuts Louis and the ref rules the cut was caused by a punch and Louis loses by TKO in 45 seconds of the 1st round. With the 5 rating for Louis we ignore the rare outcomes like this.

And to keep the ratings manageable, I kept the list to just those fighters that were generally recognized as HW champs, including the aforementioned Marvin Hart, and the much maligned Tommy Burns. I dropped all of the post Ali "partial champs" like Tubbs, Smith, Witherspoon, Spinks, etc., and just included Holmes, Tyson, Bowe, Holyfield and Lewis since Ali retired. Appologies to Norton and a few others that probably would have fared pretty well in these rankings, but I wanted to keep the list manageable.

Anyway, after looking at each matchup and applying the 5 point ranking, I came up with a list that is a bit different than if I had just listed them without this type of approach. Here's the rankings and the final points awarded

1. Ali 131
2. Louis 123
3. Johnson 122
4. Holmes 120
5. Marciano 110
6. Dempsey 105
7. Frazier 103
8. (tie) 102
Lewis
Tyson
10. (tie) 101
Charles
Tunney
12. Liston 100
13. Jeffries 98
14. Holyfield 97
15. (tie) 95
Corbett
Foreman
Sullivan
18. Walcott 88
19. Bowe 87
20. Baer 73
21. Schmeling 72
22. Fitzsimmons 69
23. Sharkey 67
24. Willard 63
25. Patterson 60

26. Braddock 53
27. Carnera 49
28. Burns 47
29. Johannson 46
30. Hart 43

Obviously, some of these matchups were based on more objective (fight films) data than others (Sullivan). For some of the early fighters (like Sullivan) I based opinion on styles and the LIKELY ability based on their documented accomplishments. Remember, this is for fun.

BrocktonBlockbuster49 wrote:how did marciano suddenly go from 4th to 5th?? lol

BrocktonBlockbuster49 wrote:...remember the patterson of the sixties had a better chin than the patterson who held the title....

BoxBuzz wrote:Hey Blocker don't expose my obvious bias here. You know I have held it against Patterson that he beat Archie. I can not assess Patterson in a fair way. However with that said Braddock takes him out by walking across the ring at which point Patterson passes out in fear upon sensing the first jab coming his way. Rory don't listen to him I"m not interested in listening to "logic" or "reason" here. I leave that to others to sort out in this theoretical.

I know one thing for certain. Braddock will be standing at the end of the 15th. We can not be equally as certain about Patterson.