Tyson Fury on why P4P is a load of bollocks

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Oldish video but relevant today with all these P4P discussions after the Loma Rigo fight.

P4P is a load of rubbish. Best boxer in the world is the #1 heavyweight the world. Right now its AJ.

 

AJ beat who?

 

He's right to be honest. I like the concept of P4P but I just consider it to mean basically who's having the best year as far as their career goes.

 

Someone about as one-dimensional as Rigo, but more his own size.

That said, I don't think the idea of P4P is a load of bollocks. 'If all the fighters were the same size' is a way of explaining P4P to people, but it's really just supposed to be an estimation of the most skilled/capable men in the sport across all divisions at the time of writing. It's less the idea of P4P and more the criteria a lot of folk use to determine who is most skilled/capable that seems flawed to me.

 

there is no way to determine it that isn't subjective fantasy. that is why it means squat to me. probably the only thing i even slightly agree with fury about.

 

There's no perfectly right or wrong list, of course. But I'd take some analysts' breakdowns of what these guys are made of much more seriously than others. I could care less about Fat Dan's P4P ratings, but I might care about that of someone whose knowledge I really respect. I'd like to see published boxing criticism held to a real standard, though I know that's not going to happen.

 

Yes but skill sets are determined in a large way by size. Joshua is a bit slow, so no one ranks him on P4P lists, but if he was 5'5 he could be super fast and do the matrix.

 

P4P never meant much to me, but after watching Lomachenko fight, he simply has skills I have never seen before...............he is unique, esp. his footwork, angles, speed, explosiveness, timing, distance, his boxing IQ is out of this world!!!!!!!

 

If Loma was a HW he wouldn't have these skills... P4P is just a way to make the little guys feel better.

 

p4p is a good concept but of course its flawed

if a flyweight was a heavy and could throw 120 punches a round for 12 rounds at fast forward speed how could other heavies compete

if wilder was a flyweight but had his heavyweight power we might see something out of a movie where he hits an opponent and they fly into the arena wall and go splat.

to use an anolgy its like trying to compare whos the best runner mo farah or usain bolt / both do the same sport but require different abilities

 

well I'm not watching that, but let me guess its because hes not on it.

 

Ali was a heavyweight and look at his skills, that is "before" his forced layoff by the prejudiced government..............he was very fast................it's possible that if Lomachenko were a heavyweight he could have been about the same, all depends on his training...................but a smaller fighter is usually faster than a larger fighter, with very few exceptions, there can always be an exception.............watch the flyweights................... Ali was not a huge heavyweight, he was 6 foot 3 inches tall, but did not weigh that much, esp. compared to today's heavyweights...................compare him with Joshua for example, no way could Joshua move like Lomachenko..................or Ali...............find a heavyweight who can fight like a flyweight! That would be crazy!

 

how do you know? if Usyk has some semblance of Lomas movement at CW why wouldnt Loma have his skillset at a higher weight? plenty of fleet footed, fast fighters at higher weights, they just dont have Lomas overall skill and intelligence

 

6 ft 2" sorry to be a anal.

 

I agree with Fury.

P4P is an idea which seems straightforward at first glance but breaks down upon deeper inspection. It also doesn't help that no one can agree on a single method of defining it. The most basic one is, if all things were equal who'd win in a fight. But things are never equal and a fighter's skills can never be isolated from his physical variables. Therefore it becomes no more than a semi-educated guessing game with a whole lot of subjective criteria thrown in, i.e. a popularity contest.

The worst excesses of the P4P mania come when you have fans having heated arguments over one or two spots in somebody's mythical P4P list as if a) it's even possible to argue with any degree of meaningfulness and b) such a thing even matters in the first place.

Far better just to appreciate a fighter's skills and achievements in their own weight class and not worry about where they fit in on some random stranger's random list of names.