Fights between previous year-end top 10 heavyweights.

The remaining years from the 70s:

1974 - 7
1975 - 5
1976 - 6
1977 - 4
1978 - 6
1979 - 3
1980 - 5

 

Right, but the standards are flawed.

You're leaving out actual fights between two top-10 rated fighters because one of them wasn't on a Top 10 list 10 or 12 months earlier.

So what's the point, exactly? It's not counting how many times top 10 fighters fought each other if you're knowingly leaving off fights where two top10 guys fought each other.

Quarry and Patterson were both rated for their rematch. Ruiz and Joshua were both rated for their rematch. I don't need to look at year-end Ring ratings from the previous calendar year to know that. So why leave fights like that off?

For consistency sake?

 

Look, there's no "right" or "wrong" here. It's just a fun statistical exercise - with the purpose of maybe finding a trend over time.

If we wanted to do it month by month, which of course would be more "correct", the work would be so enormous, that no one would even think of starting up a project like that!

 

Well I would think every year has to hold the same standards. Trust me plenty of fights were left off of other Years. At least the years I did anyway. Also I can’t imagine trying to go through the cluster F of month by month lol. That would take hours and hours for just one decade. But the results shouldn’t be dissimilar in that if it would generate more fights in one decade it should in another as well. Either way it’s a good set of data with very little down side.
Not my post either so have to ask Matt lol just throwing in my two cents

 

Been working on it for years. I think I’m getting closer…

 

When I did the 1930s, I was surprised to see, how small many of the top HWs were back then. Of course it wasn't a huge chock, as we all know, that today's HWs are considerably bigger than "back in the day"... but still a mild surprise.

Of the 47 different men, who were ranked in the top-10 during the 30s, more than half (26) never tipped the scales at 200 or above, in the year(s) they were ranked. Of these, 8 never weighed more than 190... and one (Mickey Walker) was only 169½ at his heaviest!

The year-end list for 2021 is of course not out yet, but as of Dec. 4 their top-10 looks like this:
Ratings - The Ring (ringtv.com)

Fury 6'9"/277
Usyk 6'3"/221
Joshua 6'6"/240
Wilder 6'7"/238
Whyte 6'4"/247
Parker 6'4"/241
Ruiz Jr. 6'2"/256
Ortiz 6'4"/241
Joyce 6'6"/ 264
Hrgovic 6'6"/247

Huge guys - which makes a fair comparison with the old-timers very difficult (if not impossible!), imo.

 

It's curious how massive the difference between the early 20th century and 21st century is. I expected the difference to be visible, but not to this degree.

 

Yeah it’s pretty obvious. You would think having 57 alphabet titles would create more fights but not true at all. Managers not willing to take chances are killing the sport. Boxing needs Dana White

 

To be fair we don’t know how the smaller good fighters would perform because they don’t compete at HW. I think the creation of the cruiser division gave people a false impression that those men couldn’t compete. Although I’m not sure either with the creation of steroids and PEDs. Allowing people to grow to Massive sizes with none of the negative side affects.

 

I think we're all aware, that boxing is very different today, compared to the olden times. Gone are the days where boxers could have 10-15 (sometimes even more) bouts per year. These days a couple of fights (or at most 3) a year, seems to be the norm. The Ring's top-10 HWs this month, have so far had 11 fights this year - combined! Parker has a fight coming up this weekend, which means that the top-10 will finish the year with a total of 12 fights!! Quite ridiculous really - and a far cry from the old days. In 1935, for example, the top-10 HWs fought a total of 80 times!

One reason for this is of course the bigger purses today. Especially at HW millions (sometimes tens of millions) of dollars are at stake - with endless negotiations going on, before getting two of the top men to share the same ring. Of course we all wish, it wasn't so... and that the best were eager to face the best. But I think it's naive to hope, that a change for the better is about to happen anytime soon. There's simply too much money involved.

Does this mean, that boxing is dying - as we're often told on this forum? Personally, I don't think so. Despite all that is wrong with boxing these days, it seems to be thriving in many parts of the world. In places that didn't even have pro boxing decades ago.