The Meaning of Pound for Pound

[Sam Dixon]

Originally Posted by Street Lethal

Didn't KO magazine have a pound for pound section in their ratings going back to the early 1980s? Was Mike Tyson ever in there?

KO Magazine and their sister publications did have monthly p4p listings in their ratings going back to the early/mid 80's, and if I'd hazzard a guess, I'm thinking 1984 is when I first seen them in their publications.

We'd also find the occasional ranking of the p4p best fighters in a feature article before that in the mags, as I can remember for one such instance, Boxing Illustrated compiling an extensive list (with writeups on each) of what they deemed to be 25 best fighters in the sport and that came out right after O'Grady defeated Kenty at lightweight.

[NickHudson]

Agreed. but I try and 'scale' the men's physical gifts when I compare them pound for pound.

For example, Ali to RJJ - I have Ali faster at common weight. I base this on

1) the fact he was proportionately faster at HW (compared to his peers) than RJJ was compared to HIS peers and
2) he actually moves just as well as RJJ even without messing with the data! Therefore pound for pound Ali must be superior, as it is a disadvantage being big when it comes to mobility.

Of course, this is where all the debating goes crazy as we all have different scaling methods and so on.

Originally Posted by janitor

If you took pound for pound to literaly mean, highest physical perfomence per pound of body weight, then the top 10 slots would be held by flyweights.

Laws of physics.