1920 vs 2020

A pity this wasn't posted in Classic - they would have loved it over there!

 

There were less than half as many "Top Ten Ranked" professional boxers. Thus by some definition small or large, in my opinion large, being a top 10 ranked boxer was up to twice or greater as significant as it is now.

 

That only works if the talent pool was constant, which it wasn’t.

 

Yes, If the competition is comparable. If there's a huge difference in the make-up of the respective top-10s, that is something that should be taken into consideration.

The first Ring world ratings we have are from 1924:
https://boxrec.com/media/index.php/The_Ring_Magazine's_Annual_Ratings:_1924

There obviously wasn't a lot of international competition back then, and this looks more like American ratings - with a few foreigners springled in here and there to make it look legitimate. I don't really think, we can seriously compare then with now - as we today have a MUCH more international talent pool.

 

50+% better than it is now!

 

Hmm, interesting… how do you calculate this?

 

Are we transporting them back to 1920?

 

1920's: 8 divisions
2020: 17 divisions

8 is less than 50% of 17.

 

Right... so that made the talent pool more than 50% better? I seriously doubt, if anyone else can follow this logic.

Last year 105 different countries staged pro boxing. In 1920 that number was 36. Does this mean, that the talent pool today is almost 3 times better?

 

You could certainly make that claim. Would be defensible.