Top 10 Heavyweights of all time based on wins against ranked opposition ?

some 'ranked' wins, might have been 'ranked' by lesser Sanctioning Bodies... unless of course your just talking about Lineal Champions.

 

Ring didn't even exist when many of the people on your list ... John L. Sullivan, Jim Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Joe Jeanette ... were active. And Sam Langford was never ranked and never beat any ranked fighters when Ring did exist.

That's the problem with these types of threads.

There is no singular, acknowledged ratings body that spans the history of the sport.

And current fans tend to want to dismiss sanctioning body ratings today that they don't agree with.

As if every fan in the past was in total agreement of whatever ratings were dominant in previous eras.

(As if Ring didn't go through its own periods after its launch when nobody respected or followed its ratings, either. As if they didn't go through periods when they didn't even recognize major weight classes that are common today.)

Fans have always disagreed about the order of things.

If you can find a major ratings body (at a specific time) that rated a challenger who faced a champion (from that period) in a title fight, they were "ranked" contenders.

 

for me it doesn't matter much either, though the Lineal Title and the WBA & WBC are the ones taken most seriously I believe.

interestingly also, if you look at all the Sanctioning Bodies (or best ones), you have 3 - 5 Champions depending how many lists you use and likewise 30 - 50 Top Contenders, again depending how many you use and also remembering some of the said listed Champions & Contenders 'might' also find themselves listed in more than one Top 10 list.

this is the same as the Old Listings, where there was Only ONE Top 10 list, followed by Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 and so on listings, accounting for most of the Top World Classed fighters from around the Globe.

But I do prefer it were still ONE Champion in each Weight Division and with fewer of them too.

 

Heh Mate,

Ring Magazine didn't publish rankings until 1924 so I assume you're getting your data from somewhere else for the fighters you cite who were active before then.

Assuming you're talking about wins over fighters who were ranked at the time of the fight, I don't have numbers that I am certain on, as in most instances only the annual, rather than monthly, ring magazine rankings are online.

That said, you're list mostly looks about right.

The only fighter I see as being wildly different, if there were credible top 10 rankings at that time, would be Harry Wills. It's just a guess, but I suspect if there were credible top 10 rankings throughout his career, only Louis and Ali would have more wins over ranked contenders than Harry.

The only obvious absentee that jumps to mind is Sonny Liston. I'm not by my laptop at the moment, but do have some data on ranked contenders he beat (might not be exactly what you're after), he virtually cleaned out the divison out before beating Patterson, so will have more than enough wins over ranked HWs to appear on your list.

Dependant on your interpretation, Tunney has between 5 and 8 wins over ranked HWs. He beat Weinert x 2 in 1922, Weinert was ranked #4 in the Ring's inaugural rankings in 1924 and whilst Greb was ranked at MW when Tunney beat him, as they only ranked a fighter in one division at a time, he was campaigning at HW where he was unquestionably a top 10 HW. In addition to those 3 wins, Risko, Gibbons, Dempsey x 2 and Heeney were all ring top 10 when Gene beat them.

I don't consider fighters placements on my all time lists until after they've retired, but I'd guess Usyk, Fury and AJ are all 1 win over a top 10 HW contender away from joining the bottom of your list.

 

Some terrific breakdowns by Hhascup in this thread: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/which-heavyweight-defeated-the-most-top-10-contenders.277994/

According to his count Ali tops with 32 and Louis is right behind with 31.

EDIT: He later amended that to 31 and 30: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...-another-featured-in-the-top-10.337590/page-7

 

Whose ranking are you going by?

 

If you use WBC, WBA, IBF ratings, Holyfield probably has 10 wins over ranked fighters before he even beats Buster Douglas.

The problem with just using Ring ratings, as an example with Holyfield, Ring recognized the cruiserweight division and ranked guys like Tillman, Parkey, Qawi ... when Evander fought them.

But Ring decided not to recognize the cruiserweight division for a few years, after a new group of editors and writers came in, and when Holyfield unified all the cruiserweight belts with fellow champ Carlos DeLeon ... DeLeon wasn't ranked by Ring at all.

Because they didn't recognize the division that year, but had the year before.

So Parkey was considered a big win the year before, but DeLeon wasn't the next.

It's nonsense.

 

Only one fella beat two consensus top ten hw atgs in their prime and a bubble top ten hw atg who was a bit past prime but coming off two demolitions of a top twenty five atg.

 

I have a database I keep about fights against "title contenders" which is a little different but heres what I have. Went down to 15 fights because that is the benchmark that this era is struggling to pass. This is total fights I haven't converted it to wins because it takes a lot of work to do the whole thing.

78)Langford
52)Battling Levinsky
48)Gunboat Smith
45)Joe Jeanette
44)Jim Flynn
44)Risko
41)Louis
41)Ali
40)Loughran
40)Ezzard Charles
36)Bivins
33)Jack Twin Sullivan
33)Wladimr Klitschko
32)Tony Ross
31)Miske
31)Wills
31)Holmes
30)Holyfield
29)Carl Morris
29)Maxim
28)Jim Barry
28)Jim Johnson
28)Jack Dillon
27)Choynski
27)Peter Maher
26)O Brien
26)Weinart
26)Uzcudchin
25)Jack Johnson
25)Carnera
25)Jack Sharkey
25)Walcott
25)Tyson
24)Goddard
24)Dooley
24)Coffey
24)Fulton
24)Pierre Charles
23)Patterson
23)Lennox Lewis
22)Dempsey
22)Heeney
22)Mauriello
22)Joe Frazier
21)Jim Maloney
21)Archie Moore
20)Peter Jackson
20)Schreck
20)Tommy Burns
20)Max Baer
20)Sheppard
20)Lee Savold
20)Machen
19)Gus Ruhlin
19)Frank Moran
19)Folley
18)Fitzsimmons
18)Neusel
18)Godoy
18)Foreman
18)Bugner
18)Greg Page
18)James Smith
17)Tom Sharkey
17)Marvin Hart
17)Stribling
17)Schmeling
17)Schaaf
17)Jerry Quarry
16)O Donnell
16)Jeffries
16)Brennan
16)Humbeeck
16)Pastor
16)Dudas
16)Marciano
16)Rex Layne
16)Brian London
16)Chuvalo
16)Jimmy Young
16)Mike Weaver
16)Witherspoon
15)Phil Scott
15)Gastanaga
15)Lesnevich
15)Baksi
15)Bob Baker
15)Nino Valdes
15)Jesse Ferguson
15)Rahman
15)John Ruiz
15)Joshua
15)Tyson Fury
15)Chisora

 

Also Y'all are not even checking Ring, you're checking Boxrec. Boxrec's great you know. They'll claim a stat, give you a source and when you check that source the stat is simply wrong. Got to love that boxrec accuracy being stacked on Ring's bull****.

Even body ratings are more messy than people want to believe. The IBU became the EBU and regional to the WBC but also the IBU is headed in Georgia and their world ratings look like this:


1 UK Tyson Fury
2 USA James Toney
3 BEL Alexander Ustinov
4 GER Alexander Dimitrenko
5 UK David Price
6 USA Brian Minto
7 USA Malik Scott
8 POL Andrzej Wawrzyk
9 ARG Matias Ariel Vidondo
10 CHI Zhang Junlong
11 USA Eric Molina
12 ARG Fabio Eduardo Moli
13 UK John McDermott
14 JAP Kyotaro Fujimoto
15 USA Rick Roufus



Like fool, you def trolling.


So we can't rightly say by any rating publicized or even licensed because ****ers have done ****ery all over and like **** will we give Fury rating credit for Mcdermott.


I don't really know how to go about it but it could be fun to look over NYSAC/NBA/IBU ratings in those times. Add the WBC/A/O IBF for those times, and Ring and TBRB because people like them. May as well throw Boxrec in there since y'all get your Ring info from Boxrec.

 

I haven't gone thru the whole list and checked, but who are Tyson Fury's 15?

Who were Joe Frazier's 22? (I can't put that together at all.)

Or Bob Baker's 15?

Some of these seem way way off.

Sam Langford fought 78 times against people who challenged for a heavyweight title? Really? What 78 fights were those again? Did he fight a lot of Tommy Burns' challengers? Because Johnson, Willard and Dempsey didn't fight too many challengers. And, out of those three champs, Langford fought Jack Johnson once; Jim Johnson, one of Jack's challengers, 12 times; and Jim Flynn two or three times. That's far short of 78.

I'm assuming you're counting the number of fights against title challengers (which are guys who fought for one of the major/modern big four/ titles at some point).

In that case, Wilder faced:
1. Reed
2. Beck
3. Harrison
4. Liakhovich
5. Stiverne
6. Molina
7. Duhaupas
8. Szpilka
9. Arreola
10. Washington
11. Stiverne 2
12, Ortiz
13. Fury
14. Breazeale
15. Ortiz 2
16. Fury 2
17. Fury 3
18. Parker

So, that's 18 for Wilder. Pretty glaring omission on your part. He's got as many or more than anyone who only fought in this century.

 

Frazier was absolutely not in his prime when he lost to Ali.

 

I've done this thread a decade ago or so on classic with loads of data on there from various sources.