Ring magazine 1975 ATG HW list

There was lots of pressure to include Ali in the top ten and Fleischer CORRECTLY did not succumb. 1972 was wayyyyy too early to list an active hwt in any top ten ATG list. By 1975 Nat is three years dead and Ali has not only rewon the championship against a fighter truly thought of as unbeatable but also went life and death vs his No 1 contender and won via heart, courage and determination. Boxes checked and at that time ready to be listed with the former ATG that proved themselves already.

 

The only thing more ludicrous than this list is those trying to defend it 40+ years later.

 

History.

 

Lol that's a good one

 

Ah, so its a panel concusses. The #1 thing that hurt ratings post 1970 is lack of film, eye witness and first hand testimonials.

This is why Louis will remain high with 15+ viewable films, and many before him that have 1-2 very grainy films fade from memory. The interesting thing to me is Louis placement in the 40's and 50's when it was common to see Jeffries, Johnson, Dempsey and even Corbett ahead of him.

Nat F wrote an article, Ali and all time great? No way, or a title close to that after Frazier defeated him in 1971, but gave the article some depth calling Ali the fastest heavyweight he ever saw.

 

• 
  Nat Loubet, 1975
  
  1. Joe Louis
     
     
  2. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  3. Jim Jeffries
     
     
  4. Jack Johnson
     
     
  5. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  6. Gene Tunney
     
     
  7. Bob Fitzsimmons
     
     
  8. James J. Corbett
     
     
  9. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  10. Joe Frazier
      
  
  
  
  Survey of Old Timers (Encyclopedia of World Boxing Champions, John McCallum), 1975
  
  1. James J. Jeffries
     
     
  2. Jack Johnson
     
     
  3. Bob Fitzsimmons
     
     
  4. James J. Corbett
     
     
  5. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  6. John L. Sullivan
     
     
  7. Gene Tunney
     
     
  8. Joe Louis
     
     
  9. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  10. Muhammad Ali
      
  
  
  
  John Durant -Author of "The Heavyweight Champions" (1976)
  
  1. Joe Louis
     
     
  2. Jack Johnson
     
     
  3. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  4. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  5. Gene Tunney
     
     
  6. Joe Frazier
     
     
  7. Jim Jeffries
     
     
  8. James J. Corbett
     
     
  9. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  10. Max Schemling
      
  
  
  
  Bill Brennan 1978 (Former President of the WBA)
  
  1. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  2. Joe Louis
     
     
  3. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  4. Jack Johnson
     
     
  5. Gene Tunney
     
     
  6. Jim Jeffries
     
     
  7. Max Schemeling
     
     
  8. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  9. James J. Corebett
     
     
  10. Bob Fitzsimmons
      
  
  
  
  Big Book of Boxing Reader Poll, 1978
  
  1. Joe Louis
     
     
  2. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  3. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  4. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  5. Jack Johnson
     
     
  6. Gene Tunney
     
     
  7. Joe Frazier
     
     
  8. Jim Jeffries
     
     
  9. Ezzard Charles
     
     
  10. Sonny Liston
      
  
  
  
  Sports Illustrated, 1979
  
  1. Jack Johnson
     
     
  2. Joe Louis
     
     
  3. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  4. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  5. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  6. Gee Tunney
     
     
  7. Sam Langford
     
     
  8. Jersey Joe Walcott
     
     
  9. Floyd Patterson
     
     
  10. Ezzard Charles
      
  
  
  
  Gilbert Odd, 1985 (Kings of the Ring)
  
  1. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  2. Joe Louis
     
     
  3. Jack Johnson
     
     
  4. Floyd Patterson
     
     
  5. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  6. Jim Jeffries
     
     
  7. Tommy Burns
     
     
  8. Gene Tunney
     
     
  9. Jim Corbett
     
     
  10. Max Schmeling
      
  
  
  
  Arthur Harris, 1992 (Nov 1992 Boxing Scene)
  
  1. Muhammad Ali
     
     
  2. Joe Louis
     
     
  3. Jack Dempsey
     
     
  4. Jack Johnson
     
     
  5. Gene Tunney
     
     
  6. Rocky Marciano
     
     
  7. Larry Holmes
     
     
  8. Jersey Joe Walcott
     
     
  9. Joe Frazier
     
     
  10. Sonny Liston
      
      
      No George Foreman ...until after he beats Moorer.

 

Nat Loubet was in charge when the RING took bribes to fix their ratings for Don King's 1977 tournament on ABC.

In fact, the Ring ratings were considered so sleazy during the last three years of the 1970s that the television networks began focusing on the WBC and WBA ratings, and that's how the sanctioning bodies assumed so much power. Before that, nobody really paid much attention to them.

 

Thats not true. Newspapers all over the country regularly posted the NBA/WBA rankings from the 1940s well into the 1970s and Boxing Illustrated (which for a lot of its run was better than Ring, relied on the WBA/NBA ratings in its magazine as opposed to coming up with their own meaningless ratings.

 

It's definitely true that newspapers printed NBA rankings, along with those of Ring, for years. Boxing Illustrated was the one mag I could find as a kid that printed the WBA & WBC ratings, though BI did come up with their own too. The WBA & WBC ratings were actually pretty good, in addition to being "official", until about 1977 or so.

 

I would be interested in seeing when Dempsey overtook jack johnson as the greatest heavyweight.

 

I was referring to television. When the RING ratings scandal broke, and everyone was brought before Congress, television networks distanced themselves from the RING ratings and started booking fights and fighters based on WBC and WBA ratings.

Before that, if an org stripped someone, like the WBA stripping Ali for signing to rematch with Liston, or the WBA stripping Bob Foster for not fighting Rondon, the networks didn't pay them much mind. Ali and Foster were still the world champs. The other guys weren't. The world champs tended to be clear in everyone's mind.

After the Ring scandal, the networks followed the lead of the sanctioning bodies because there was no longer a ratings body the networks considered unbiased. And the sanctioning bodies took that power the networks gave them and ran with it.

The Ring ratings scandal coincides with the rise of the power of the sanctioning bodies, particularly the WBC - which was rarely mentioned by name at all prior to that, but was once the networks started citing their ratings. Which, in turn, lead to the creation of more sanctioning bodies.

 

Woeful list.

 

I still dont agree. Im not sure how you can say the networks ignored the WBA when it was network support of the WBA HW tournament after Ali was stripped that made it so successful. It was a huge event for ABC and every fight was televised and got everyone hyped up and engaged. It was a huge succes, a great tournament (probably the best HW tournament ever) and we still talk about it today. That all happened in spite of, not because of the Ring. The thing that sold it was the WBA title.

After Rondon was made a champion several of his title fights were covered by television which wouldnt have happened had he not had the WBA title because they were pretty pedestrian matchups.

I think its the other way around frankly. People always tout the Ring ratings but they never dictated who got a title shot. They never dictated who was and who wasnt a champion. They had no influence on weight divisions either because they ignored many of the junior divisions long after they had been implemented and only years later retroactively recognized champions in those divisions that had previously been generally accepted by everyone else.

And frankly their ratings often sucked. You can pick any ring magazine up from Fleischers lifetime, scan the ratings, and find some seriously flawed picks in almost every weight division. Nat Loubet told me himself that common practice of the Ring was to rate or cover foreign fighters who didnt really deserve the ink but could garner more international sales. You also often see a situation where a guy spent his entire career fighting at lightweight for example, he moves up to JWW because he finds he cant make the weight, and fights similarly overgrown lightweights, never having fought a legit WW or even a WW contender and Fleischer would suddenly drop him into the WW rankings. Or just as often the guy might go two years fighting at 138, 139, 137, etc and yet Fleischer keeps him rated in the lightweight division. On another thread I gave the example of Laszlo Papp who somehow worked his way up to the #4 ring spot without ever having fought a MW contender. Why? Because Papp was popular in Europe. There wasnt a whole lot of rhyme or reason and because of this you would often find Fleischer having to explain his ratings in print or even on the radio.

It was basically just one guy or a guy and his buddies rating who they wanted the way they wanted sometimes they were influenced by politics, sometimes they were influenced by financial reasons, and sometimes they were simply arbitrary. Their ratings werent any better than anyone elses.

 

I don't tout the Ring ratings. I'm not a Ring Magazine ratings guy. I could care less for their ratings.

And I've posted extensively on this board about how Ring had no power to make title fights or force guys to fight anyone.

But Alex Wallau, who was a producer for ABC Sports (before he called fights) at the time of the scandal was interviewed countless times on the subject. And he stated matter of factly that when the Ring scandal broke, and ABC distanced itself from Ring, the network had to rely on the sanctioning body ratings after that.

ABC didn't before. Before the scandal, they relied on Ring ratings when deciding what fights to air and what fights they wouldn't, and who they'd call champ and who they wouldn't. After the scandal, they relied on sanctioning body ratings. Same with CBS and NBC.

And if Wallau, the guy who made the fights for the networks at that time, and later became the president of ABC, says that's what happened, and they had to rely on the sanctioning bodies for ratings after that, I'll take his word for it.

And the big beneficiary, in particular, was the WBC. You'd be hard pressed to find any mentions of a fighter pre-1977 being announced as a WBC champion before the Ring Scandal. Most fights from then now labeled as WBC title fights were simply called world title fights by the announcers and the broadcasters. You never heard Muhammad Ali or Joe Frazier or George Foreman or any of them announced as the WBC champion. Napoles. Stracey. Palomino pre-1977 was called the welterweight champion during telecasts. After that, he was usually announced as WBC champ.

When they could no longer rely on Ring for their ratings, they made it a point to state whose ratings they were talking about when broadcasting a fight. And whether the guy was a WBC champ or a WBA champ.

The NBA/WBA didn't have any real pull with network television after the Kefauver Committee broke up the IBC at the end of the 1950s.

And, yes, ABC televised the WBA heavyweight tournament. But that was also the only time the heavyweight champion was ever banned from boxing and had his title stripped. And even then ABC spent countless hours showcasing Joe Frazier and his title fights ... and they were clear never to proclaim Frazier or Ellis as the World Champion (because Ring still recognized Ali as the champ) ... UNTIL Ring decided to recognize the winner of the Frazier-Ellis unification as champ. (And ABC was directly involved in trying to put that together.)