BoxRec's supposed Ring Magazine's Annual World Ratings are wrong...

Again is there any monthly or annual rating in any edition of Ring Magazine that matches what I posted and what you see on the link for the other divisions?

I wasn’t around in the 1940s and don’t have magazines from that era, but I started reading in the late 1970s and through the 80s and into the 90s at least and for the life of me I never remember ‘annual ratings.’ I just remember monthly ratings.

But then again, my memory ain’t what it used to be, haha.

 

I’m trying to get at whether this was a deliberate change or an innocent mistake.

Do these ratings that I linked appear in any way in any issue of The Ring?

Unfortunately, your link takes me to a page that is gray with no images or words.

 

I previously pointed out on their forum that their 1966 year end heavyweight ratings don’t match those published in the magazine, but I was ignored.

 

Alas, for whatever reason the post in the link is just blank gray. It has a title to the side but no image or text.

I don’t have Ring magazines from that date range (I used to have a nice collection of Ring and other boxing mags from the 80s/90s, today I only have one from I think 1979 that I got on eBay because I recognized it as the first issue of Ring I ever bought so really for sentimental reasons) so I cannot check.

So sorry if I’m being exacting at what I’m trying to get at.

According to you (and I am not doubting you), the February 1944 issue has 1943 annual ratings.

Does it also have regular monthly ratings? Like every issue of the ring at least in the era when I was reading regularly? (For instance, in January you would have world ratings; in February, you would have world ratings, which reflected any changes due to results since the January issue’s deadline date that moved people up or down, in or out, of the ratings; same thing for the other 10 months).

Have you checked to see if someone just went with the February monthly ratings instead of the ‘annual’ ratings? I think if you checked those for January, February and March you would either find ‘aha, they make a mistake and went with the monthly rankings’ OR you would find ‘nope, there’s not a single instance of this particular set of ratings in or around that date,’ in which case they made them up or somehow otherwise screwed it up.

(I’m not anxious to ascribe malice to what might be a simple mistake of incompetence on Boxrec’s part. It’s a helluva a lot of work to go through to do all those years to purposely fudge the ratings … and to what end?)

ALSO, I listed in an earlier post the top 10 heavyweight ratings as Boxrec has it from the February 1944 issue. Can you list the top 10 that you have from the annual ratings to show us how different they are? Not every weight class, but I’m curious if they’re drastically different from what Boxrec has or similar — same names in a different order, 9 out of 10 or correct but there’s a different No. 8 or whatever. Just out of curiosity.

AND FINALLY, now that you’ve explained that they did, at least for a time, publish actual ‘annual ratings,’ do they explain the methodology for this? I mean is it 1 point per month a person is rated 10th, 2 if they’re rated ninth … and how does it work if a championship changes (like Joe Louis is rated as ‘champion,’ not No. 1, so he is technically not ranked … if he had lost the title in December would that mean he wouldn’t be rated for that year?). I’m curious if they were transparent on how they derived an ‘annual ranking’ — like is 12 months rated between 8 and 10 better than six months rated No. 4 and the other six months out of the rankings altogether? There must have been some method of determining this.

I appreciate you delving into this mystery. I’m hopeful someone can alert Boxrec to get them to locate and update to have the correct ratings, or someone else can simply do a new database (I realize it’s a lot of work and probably for no reward … or at least no financial reward). But maybe if someone put up an accurate database, we could get that pinned here for all to reference for as long as this site exists.

 

I have a collection of old Ring Magazines, happy to help add to this project if a few others want to help out and get a definitive set of historical ratings.

 

Could you pick a random year and check for the things I’ve brought up?

Like in 19XX: What are the annual ratings listed in The Ring/what are the annual ratings listed in Boxrec? Just pick a random weight class, doesn’t matter.

And if they’re different, can you check the monthly ratings to see if they fit what Boxrec lists as annual? Say for that month, the month before and the month after?

And do they explain methodology? Did they have a numbers system or do the ratings board sit around and say ‘John Doe should be No. 1 for the year, James Smith should be 2, Fred Jones should be 3, etc’ … which would be imo the most bogus way to do it.

 

As I made a post describing its possible this stems from boxrecs ring rankings only ranking one fighter in a division. And these magazines might rank fighters in two which many were fighting in. That difference would lead to a substantial domino effect throughout the rankings. Of course boxrec doesn't get to claim this is someone elses ranking on a historical resource while changing their methodology but you think theres got to be a reason. You don't make this many mistakes randomly.

 

I find that in many cases the alleged year-end ratings on Boxrec more closely resemble the ratings for the end of January the following year. For instance, Boxrec's heavyweight ratings for the end of 1955 are:

Moore
Baker
Jackson
Holman
Pastrano
Valdes
Summerlin
Satterfield
Johnson
Charles

The ratings released to the press at the end of the year were:

Moore
Baker
Jackson
Satterfield
Charles
Holman
Valdes
Walls
Slade
Cockell

Quite different, but the ratings released to the press at the end of January 1955 match the ones on Boxrec apart from the juxtaposition of Valdes and Pastrano, taking into account results such as Charles's loss to Young Jack Johnson and Satterfield's loss to Holman.

https://ibb.co/S4yTXgJv
https://ibb.co/xq9z6DZJ

Since the Boxrec listing of Ring ratings was written 20 years ago, it's unlikely we'll get a clear accounting of where the data came from.

 

Exactly, almost all of them are a year back if you look at the actual date. I've been allocating for this for years. It actually tells you.

The Ring Magazine's Annual Ratings: 1976

As selected by The Ring magazine in the March 1977 issue.

 

I explained that in one of my posts.

Production time for a magazine to hit the stands was a standard 2-3 months.

The January issue would not have results from December … it would have results from October or November. So they can’t be year-end rankings or full-year rankings if all the results for that year haven’t taken place by the time they ship the magazine to the printer.

So it would have to be the February issue at the earliest and maybe March before they had an issue that included all the results from the previous year to issue a ranking that would be either ‘what fighters were ranked at the end of the year’ or ‘here’s how we have them ranked taking into account the full calendar year.’

I’m still curious about Ring’s methodology (if it was ever explained) for how it determined ‘these are the rankings for 1943’ or whatever.

@thistle @SimonLock if you guys (with help from others) could get the annual rankings from The Ring in a single document, you could get AI to scan, sort and format it. We do this with datasets in my work (not me, others) — gather stuff from a lot of sources and put them in some sort of document and AI will create a spreadsheet or sort it in text.