Is Wlad the best all-time-heavyweight? NO OPINION, just PURE RECORD ANALYSIS

Ali is the one of the worst clinchers and grabbers and head-down-pushers and insulters and run-away'ers. Anyone who complains about Klitschko clinching but praises Ali's style has to rewatch Ali's fights. Klitschko's maximum clinching (Sam Peter) is Ali's AVERAGE clinching.

Add to it his non-existing defense (I mean switch on basically ANY FIGHT of Ali, any round: He blocks all punches with his head, he has no head movement) and his featherfistedness and you get ... the undisputed #1 all-time-great.

 

This is not true, I pointed out this flaw very early in this thread.

Moreover it's a bit different than you think, BECAUSE NOONE CLAIMS Nielsen to be a top20 boxer. So I threw together some top20 boxers and ran the calculations with them. The premise for top20 boxers IS ALREADY that they box better opposition. Thus when you compare their record you already compare people where the consensus is that THEY BOX THE BEST POSSIBLE.

Yes, maybe he is. And maybe Brian Nielsen is underrated.

 

OK, some of my ideas for a more accurate calculation:

In case you didn't read all posts of this threads so far here is a short summary:

So far my humble/limited calculations basically do the following:

1. Delete all fights from the record where both boxers weren't 200+
2. Delete all fights against boxers below a usable margin (BUM), that is a boxer who THROUGHOUT HIS WHOLE CAREER (= not at the time the fight took place) has a "winning vs losing ratio" of 3:1 OR WORSE (20-10 is a bum, 20-5 is not a bum). The term bum is derogatory, but communicates well instantly.
3. KO in round 13 or later are converted to UD.

This calculation gives a very simplified (since I had to do it by hand) overview over the career of a boxer and a rough approximation of his achievements. This calculation does not distinguish between winning against a high quality opponent or a low level opponent. This is the major flaw. But nevertheless it's an interesting first overview.

The following are my personal ideas for my calculation software that will calculate the whole career deeper and more extensive. I don't know the outcome yet, and maybe while developing the software I will have to add some new rules or maybe not.

Free your mind a little bit from the general view that Wlad is bad, Sam Peter sucks and Marciano is the greatest. Instead focus on the task

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In other words:

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You need:

• Boxers with strong attacking skills = many wins
• Boxers with power in the fists = high KO ratio
• Boxers with strong defensive skills = low self-KOs
• Boxers who are dominating = UD is better than SD
• Boxers who achieved all of the above against strong opposition

OK, here the outline of my proposed calculation:

1. Fights like sparring, Olympia, amateur... are DISCARDED
2. Only official score results are taken into consideration
3. Behaviour outside of the ring is discarded
4. You get credited with your opponents record of "non-bum-wins" + "bum-or-nonbum-losses". So Ali (vs Foreman) would be credited by Foreman's 20~5 (20 non-bum wins and 5 losses, I am simplifying Foreman's career record a bit). One cannot calculate deeper than 2 levels since one would introduce unsolvable circles. And I think 2 levels is just fine.
5. Foreman's "20" would be multiplied with Foreman's non-bum KO-ratio since a win over Foreman means not only that you beat a good boxer (= has a high win-loss-ratio) but also that you were able to protect yourself against a hard puncher. So let's say Foreman has a KO ratio of 80% then Ali will be credited with 20*( 1+0.8 )~5
6. Since we want to know how Foreman's achievements are BESIDES of the fight with Ali, we would credit Ali with 19*1.8 (instead of 20*1.8 ) and with 4 instead of 5. This prevents Ali from being punsihed BY HIS OWN VICTORY, since it's Ali himself who made a "4" to "5". Moreover fighters cannot upvalue their record by fighting the same guy over and over: Because we calculate how worthy the opposition of Foreman was WHEN NOT fighting Ali.
7. Since I calculated the quality of Foreman (and of any other opponent of Ali) I can theoretically DO A CALCULATION WIHTOUT DELETING THE BUMS OF ALI. But I have a problem with that because FIGHTING a lot of bums adds little wins to your record (this is intended) but adds lots of losses (= the losses of the bums) to your record. So I will have to see whether this rule doesn't punish the old fighters too much (who typically fought guys like 120-50) thus would suddenly add -50- to their record.
8. UD, MD, SD, D
   • You get credited UD 100%
   • 50% for a draw
   • MD 83.3%
   • SD 66.6%
   • NC 0% as if the fight never took place
   • DQ is problematic, but I guess it's 100% since I don't want a boxer to be punished if his opponent is disqualified.
   • KO 100%, but a KO win additionally increases your KO ratio.
   • So Ali would have been credited 19*1.8*100%. Had Ali won a SD against Foreman he would have been credited 19*1.8*0.666
9. Please note that Foreman is not punished by LOSING to Ali other than by his loss count "5" (thus his win-loss-ratio). This may turn out to be problematic (since we punish him for a loss vs Ali like for a loss vs a bum), but I have no clue so far how to punish an opponent for a loss, see below.
10. Now we take Ali's whole career achievement (= the sum of all fight values we calculated) and....
    • multiply it with Ali's non-bum-KO ratio. Why multiply the whole record instead of crediting a single KO win with, say, 200%? Because one single KO win (maybe a lucky punch) over a very strong opponent shall not distort the whole record. Instead the calculation should reflect the overall dangerousness of a fighter (remember the aliens want a dangerous opponent, not one that had luck in a few fights)
    • multiply it with Ali's win-loss-ratio. Why multiply it? Because so far Ali is credited for winning, but not punished for losing. THIS is the step where it is done.
11. What's missing is: So far a loss by SD weighs the same as by UD. Or worse: That a loss by KO is the same as by SD. (I need to introduce a "China-Chin-Coefficient" but so far I don't know where). And we all know that a KO loss in round 1 is different from a KO loss in round 15, but how do we statistify it?

OK, what do you think. Does that sound somewhat workable?

These are optional considerations

1. Take age of opponent into consideration. I know this sounds like a logical thing to do, but it's very hard to achieve, since you don't know the peak of a boxer. I was impressed by Evan Fields (vs Ibragimov) at the age of 45. Moreover it's like Foreman put it: The legs are weaker but the chin is stronger. Your experience grows also. So this is an open issue.
2. Take the peak of a fighter into consideration: Also hard to statistify. Take Tyson for example: The so called prime Tyson went to the scorecards with James Tillis, Mitch Green, James Smith, Tony Tucker and Donovan Ruddock. Got KOed by (featherfisted) Holyfield and Douglas. How do I statistify such a prime Tyson? Does anyone get more points for beating a prime Tyson?
3. Beating an undefeated fighter gives you more points. Any ideas?
4. Fighting a world title gives you more points. I don't like this idea at all. A "WBC world championship" is just a NAME for a fight. I don't see enough reasons to make it count differently.
5. Is a KO in round 10 more worth than in round 12?

 

Before you hail anyone, I calculated Brian Nielsen and Brian Nielsen IS NOT LEADING. I don't know what Antsu made in the calculation (maybe Antsu took the opponent's record at the day of the fight instead of his whole career record).

Brian Nielsen:
23 non-bum fights (Klitschko 27)
21 wins (Klitschko 25), 14 by KO + 7 by non-KO (Klitschko 21+4), KO ratio 65% (Klitschko 85%).

Considering Nielsen's 66 fights, his bum:non-bum ratio (34%) is very bad (Klitschko 50%). Just by these stats you see that Brian Nielson was either overprotected or failed several times to achieve/keep higher rankings.

So my calculations definitely work to get a first overview over a fighters career.

 

I re-checked Joe Louis record and evidently I made a mistake: Joe Louis is WORSE THAN I thought:

He had 8 fights against non-bum-heavyweights, of which he won 2 by NON-KO.

Again, I calculate the bum'ness with the whole career record not at the time of the fight.

This is a 75% KO-ratio but I mind actually to credit Joe Louis with 75%, the same way I mind to credit someone with 100% when he had just 1 KO in 1 fight. In my view you need at least 10 wins to qualify for a percentage value. I mean COME ON: T-E-N wins, is that too much to ask?

But you obviously count Dempsey's fights where he hasn't been a heavyweight. Jack Dempsey had not a single non-bum heavyweight fight.

If we mercifully overlook that Jack Dempsey was a cruiser and if we upgrade all his fights to heavyweight then we get the following stat:
13 non-bum fights (against the same 9 guys), 10 wins, 3 by non-KO, +4 losses by bums.

non-bum-KO-ratio: ~50% featherfist
overall KO-ratio: ~60%
non-bum:bum ratio: ~15%. ABYSMAL

His greatest achievement, as far as I can see, is to have influenced Mike Tyson to become a boxer.

I fail to see HOW ANYONE can put featherfist-cruiser Dempsey on the same ranking list like Lennox or Klitschko. They were boxing on different planets.

In this example you see directly how the good-old-NAME is bigger than the real-world-achievements.

But then you would have to make a ranking list for each era and each regulation set. What I try to accomplish ist to have a ranking list where the toppest guy is the most competitive (= would beat the most of the others on that list).

But you argue like this:
"Marciano is one of the best heavyweights"
"But Marciano was just 180+"
"Yes, but they were ALL so small".

You see, you want to make it a RELATIVE ranking list while I want to make it ABSOLUTELY COMPARABLE.

"Steve Miller is the best heavyweight of all times."
"But he is 5'0'' and has beaten only guys 140-150lbs"
"Yeah, but he has won the kindergarden world title 37 times"

I don't care about RELATIVE CHAMPS.
Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis were RELATIVE CHAMPS.

 

They are not. In heavyweight boxing you have OPPONENTS who can knock you out with 1 punch. You neither have that in running nor 140 lbs boxing matches.

But then you have gazillion heavyweight ranking lists for each era&regulation combination. This is exactly what boxing fans DO NOT want.

They want to know who the best heavy is. Not the best of a certain era with a certain regulation list. I disagree that the boxing rules changed too much so that we cannot put Louis & Lewis on the same list.

Look, so far it seems not fair to punish nowadays fighters because they cannot go more than 12 rounds. And in my view Ali DID NOT ADJUST TO 15 round to KO his opponent 13+, BUT HE FAILED TO DO IT.

That's probably the basic difference between my view and yours. You say "Ali (and his opponent) adjusted the pace to go 15 rounds and that's why it took longer to get a KO (TKO13+)" and I say "Ali tried but failed to do it in 12 rounds". Both views are valid and we will see how I will program it. From my viewpoint (since it is HEAVYWEIGHT) it's a "Failure within 12". But I am open to your viewpoint, too.

But then you have a GREATNESS list that could also include achievements outside of the ring.

I want a competitiveness list, where a higher fighter would beat the lower fighter most of the times. And this is how people view ranking lists.

If you put Sam Langford #1 and Ali #10 then people instinctively think that Langford could beat Ali. And you would have to put an asterix "*" and explain that "although Langford is #1 his successes have to be seen in the socio-cultural-medical context of his times". I don't like such lists. And IF you make such lists then don't put anyone on it from another socio-cultural context there.

How can opinions be WRONG? I agree that mine differs from yours but that means only that we agree to disagree.