Another attempt ranking HWs

[The Great John L]

I did this once before, but this time I’ve expanded the ratings to include quite a few top non-champs and the list now looks a bit different. When creating these ratings, I took quite a bit of time and entered each fighter into a spreadsheet so that I could capture a numerical rating of how I thought a head to head matchup of 2 fighters would come out if they fought an extended series of say 10 fights. Based on this I assigned a rating of 1-5 to each of the fighters, with the rating meaning:

1 – would lose virtually everytime. Always the possibility of an upset, but would probably lose all 10 bouts.
2 – would lose most of the matches. Would probably only win one or two out of ten.
3 – would probably split the 10 matches.
4 – would win most of the matches. Probably win eight or nine out of ten.
5 – would win virtually everytime. Always the possibility of an upset, but would probably win all 10 bouts.

For example, if I compared Ali to Marvin Hart, I would give Ali a 5 and Hart a 1.

Obviously this can only be done based on my own personal opinions, and many of the fighters have little or no film footage to review, so I had to judge many of the early fighters on what I have read about them.

Anyway, when I compared the 74 HWs in my list to each other, I came up with these rankings:


Ali 346
Louis 328
Johnson 326
Holmes 321
Marciano 320
Dempsey 314
Tyson 308
Tunney 300
Frazier 298
Jeffries 296
Lewis 294
Langford 290
Wills 282
Charles 280
Holyfield 279
Corbett 276
Foreman 273
Sullivan 262
Liston 261
Jeanette 257
Walcott 254
Bivins 247
Lyle 247
Jackson 246
Bowe 243
Tucker 237
Schmeling 233
T. Sharkey 232
Norton 227
V. Kitschko 226
Witherspoon 224
J. Young 220
Page 220
Quarry 214
McVey 210
J. Sharkey 210
Ellis 210
M. Baer 206
Bugner 206
Lastarza 205
Tubbs 205
Fitzsimmons 203
Shavers 202
Byrd 202
E. Ray 201
Godfrey 199
Patterson 199
Bonavena 196
Douglas 196
Machen 191
Chuvalo 181
BC Smith 181
M. Spinks 179
Weaver 178
P. Thomas 177
Choynski 175
Braddock 174
Dokes 174
W. Kitschko 172
J. Tate 170
Burns 169
Willard 162
Berbick 161
Ingo 160
Sanders 159
Hart 153
Rahman 150
Coetzee 144
Carnera 139
Brewster 131
Moorer 129
Briggs 122
Ruiz 119
L. Spinks 107

[The Great John L]

Corbett 276
Foreman 273
Sullivan 262
Liston 261

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Care to actually put some effort into this by doing the same thing I did, or are you capable only of half witted comments?

[pundit]

Looks like a lot of work, but I doubt it makes the ranking any less subjective and therefore more reliable.

[pundit]

Corbett 276
Foreman 273
Sullivan 262
Liston 261

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[BrocktonBlockbuster49]

I did something similar with the top 50 at 175, 160 and 147. I haven't gotten around to the heavyweights yet.

Jim Corbett was crap. What he did in the ring no one would get away with today. Even Caveman Lee was more polished.

just when i thought u were beginning to smarten up, u bring urself down to this level. u defintley underate corbett.

[The Great John L]

Looks like a lot of work, but I doubt it makes the ranking any less subjective and therefore more reliable.

Well it at least makes you put some thought into it. The only way to really rank fighters from different time periods is to determine how each would perform against the others on the list. I keep hearing so many people say how they have their "top 20 head to head", but how can you make this list if you don't actually list the fighters and then try to determine how each fighter would perform against the other fighters on the list?

And yes, as I stated, it's all subjective, but at least it makes you think about it before you say one fighter is "better" than another fighter.

[The Great John L]

I did something similar with the top 50 at 175, 160 and 147. I haven't gotten around to the heavyweights yet.

Jim Corbett was crap. What he did in the ring no one would get away with today. Even Caveman Lee was more polished.

Thanks for the clarification. If you did "something similar" for LH, MW and WW, then you must have come up with some type of numbers that drove your rankings?

[pundit]

Looks like a lot of work, but I doubt it makes the ranking any less subjective and therefore more reliable.

Well it at least makes you put some thought into it. The only way to really rank fighters from different time periods is to determine how each would perform against the others on the list. I keep hearing so many people say how they have their "top 20 head to head", but how can you make this list if you don't actually list the fighters and then try to determine how each fighter would perform against the other fighters on the list?

And yes, as I stated, it's all subjective, but at least it makes you think about it before you say one fighter is "better" than another fighter.

My main problem with head-to-head based all-time rankings is that I believe there has been genuine progress in heavyweight boxing. For one, every 20 years or so the average height at hvw increases by an inch. Today the average top fighter is about 6'4, in the 1930s he was 6'0 perhaps. Everything else equal bigger fighters are stronger, and they have a reach advantage. They tend to be slower, but here the next point comes in - conditioning ought to be better today. Conditioning has improved in all sports, it would be weird if boxing was an exception. Better conditioning has diminuished the disadvantages of being tall while the advantages have remaeind unchanged (Primo Carera, who many compare to Valuev, was 6'5 - Lennox Lewis' size). Today's top fighters may not be better boxers, but they are probably better athletes (in fact this is a bit hard to maintain with the current crop of heavyweights, but taken the 1990s then).

And so on. This is why I believe that at the end of the day you can compare boxers only relative to their time, and head-to-head comparisons make only limited sense.

[The Great John L]

Looks like a lot of work, but I doubt it makes the ranking any less subjective and therefore more reliable.

Well it at least makes you put some thought into it. The only way to really rank fighters from different time periods is to determine how each would perform against the others on the list. I keep hearing so many people say how they have their "top 20 head to head", but how can you make this list if you don't actually list the fighters and then try to determine how each fighter would perform against the other fighters on the list?

And yes, as I stated, it's all subjective, but at least it makes you think about it before you say one fighter is "better" than another fighter.

My main problem with head-to-head based all-time rankings is that I believe there has been genuine progress in heavyweight boxing. For one, every 20 years or so the average height at hvw increases by an inch. Today the average top fighter is about 6'4, in the 1930s he was 6'0 perhaps. Everything else equal bigger fighters are stronger, and they have a reach advantage. They tend to be slower, but here the next point comes in - conditioning ought to be better today. Conditioning has improved in all sports, it would be weird if boxing was an exception. Better conditioning has diminuished the disadvantages of being tall while the advantages have remaeind unchanged (Primo Carera, who many compare to Valuev, was 6'5 - Lennox Lewis' size). Today's top fighters may not be better boxers, but they are probably better athletes (in fact this is a bit hard to maintain with the current crop of heavyweights, but taken the 1990s then).

And so on. This is why I believe that at the end of the day you can compare boxers only relative to their time, and head-to-head comparisons make only limited sense.

Interesting comments about the size of the current top HWs, but if you actually look at the top 10 Boxrec HW's you'll see that only Valuev, Wlad and Lyahkovich are 6'4" or taller. Obviously todays athletes are bigger than they were in the past, but unfortunately, the best athletes are no longer drawn to boxing, due it's steady decline into a minor sport. Today there are more and safer alternatives for top athletes. And of course, there is almost no real "system" for developing fighters anymore. At least not in the US.

[Arsenal]

Looks like a lot of work, but I doubt it makes the ranking any less subjective and therefore more reliable.

Well it at least makes you put some thought into it. The only way to really rank fighters from different time periods is to determine how each would perform against the others on the list. I keep hearing so many people say how they have their "top 20 head to head", but how can you make this list if you don't actually list the fighters and then try to determine how each fighter would perform against the other fighters on the list?

And yes, as I stated, it's all subjective, but at least it makes you think about it before you say one fighter is "better" than another fighter.

My main problem with head-to-head based all-time rankings is that I believe there has been genuine progress in heavyweight boxing. For one, every 20 years or so the average height at hvw increases by an inch. Today the average top fighter is about 6'4, in the 1930s he was 6'0 perhaps. Everything else equal bigger fighters are stronger, and they have a reach advantage. They tend to be slower, but here the next point comes in - conditioning ought to be better today. Conditioning has improved in all sports, it would be weird if boxing was an exception. Better conditioning has diminuished the disadvantages of being tall while the advantages have remaeind unchanged (Primo Carera, who many compare to Valuev, was 6'5 - Lennox Lewis' size). Today's top fighters may not be better boxers, but they are probably better athletes (in fact this is a bit hard to maintain with the current crop of heavyweights, but taken the 1990s then).

And so on. This is why I believe that at the end of the day you can compare boxers only relative to their time, and head-to-head comparisons make only limited sense.

Good post. But boxers, well many of them are still stuck in their ways and do things that other sports would frown on.

[Ezzard]

This is a really interesting exercise... The top 4 is basically my top 4.