If Heavyweight rankings were strictly lineal

If the ranking rules were as follows:

1) You can only go up in the rankings by beating someone ranked above you, in which case you take their place and everyone in between moves down by 1 place.
2) Fighters are removed from the published rankings after 2 years of inactivity, but will be reinstated if they fight within 5 years.
3) Fighters are removes from the rankings altogether after 5 years of inactivity

Then I believe the current Heavyweight rankings would be as follows:

1) Oleksandr Usyk
2) Tyson Fury
3) Anthony Joshua
4) Andy Ruiz Jr
5) Dillian Whyte
6) Joseph Parker
7) Zhilei Zhang
8) Deontay Wilder
9) Robert Helenius
10) Ali Eren Demirezen
11) Kacper Meyna
12) Adam Kownacki
13) Luis Ortiz
14) Jared Anderson
15) Charles Martin
16) Joe Joyce
17) Derek Chisora
18) Lawrence Okolie
19) Lukasz Rozanski
20) Otto Wallin

 

This is based on my full database of fights, so goes back in some form to the 1800s. Not fully complete obviously, and there may be mistakes, but it goes back far enough to make the current rankings fairly solid.

 

Actually Wilder is there because he beat Helenius, who beat Kownacki, who beat Martin.

 

Yes, just let me know what date you want to see.

 

The Kownacki effect is a problem, when a poor fighter gets a good win followed by a string of losses it allows some pretty mediocre fighters to get a ranking. A bad example was when Sedreck Fields beat Shannon Briggs, then lost to every other Heavyweight boxer in the world.

 

At the end of May 2009, the lineal rankings were as follows:

1) Wladimir Klitschko
2) Alexander Povetkin
3) Chris Byrd
4) Vitali Klitschko
5) Eddie Chambers
6) Samuel Peter
7) James Toney
8) Ruslan Chagaev
9) Nikolay Valuev
10) Larry Donald
11) Sultan Ibragimov
12) Evander Holyfield
13) John Ruiz
14) Oleg Maskaev
15) Hasim Rahman
16) Joseph Chingangu
17) Osborn Machimana
18) Corrie Sanders
19) Shannon Briggs
20) Siarhei Liakhovich

 

Joyce beat Parker (#13), and became the #13 ranked Heavyweight.

When Parker beat Wilder (#7), he jumped up the rankings, but Joyce stayed where he was.

This system doesn't look back in time at previous losses, it just works on each fight individually.