Decided to poll this based on a post on another topic. Wondering what the general consensus is for rankings.
Lineal. Or compare the quality of the matchups do the talking instead of the label of the belt. But lineal is The ring is the stand in for the lineal title and is the hardest belt to win. But it's not the lineal title. Part of that being the hardest belt to win is the Rings insistence that 1 fight 2 for vacant titles leaves the title vacant for large swaths of time. This is straight up unworkable in the lower weight classes where fighters hop around. FW has been vacant for 13 years and 130 was vacant even longer. Picking Ennis at WW was an epic fail. 154 is the best division in boxing and the Rings champion is...Jermell Charlo who hasn't defended in years. So that being harder to win can be because the Ring made the wrong decision and isn't correcting it. There's also the fact Ring is owned by the Saudi's and is probably going to spearhead a coup to hand over the sport to Zuffa. All that credibility they've built as the neutral arbitrator is about to go up in flames.
Lineal. Beat the man who beat the man is best for me. After that these days I'm not entirely sure there is much difference, each org and magazine has their own agenda and bias - that said, Ring usually seems to have a better more accurate top 10 for each division than the sometimes inscrutable orgs
Ring. It's easy to see that the Ring title holder is 99% of the time the best in the division or the man who beat the best. You can't say this about alphabets.
Until the last couple of years, Ring Magazine. For close to a century they were pretty much not beholden to anyone and followed a strict (sometimes too strict) code for becoming champion. Since being purchased by Golden Boy and then by Turki Al-Sheikh, it is hard to believe that Ring has had no leanings or bias based on ownership. I still rate them much higher than thw Alphabet Boys who do an awful lot of very questionable, if not outright shady, things.
Like I said in the other thread the ring is just a failed boxing magazine now. It ain’t been relevant since the 80s an 90s when fans had to get all their news and info from boxing magazines. which is why it went out of business for years when people got other ways of getting their boxing news. Just because it's now owned and revived by the richest guy in boxing doesn't give it more credibility. Ask the fighters if they rather fight for the ring magazine title or the wba/wbc /Ibf/wbo 'world titles' an see how they answer?
Same as @CST80 said It comes down to resume over anything else. Sure someone can beat a champion but resume is the main thing Example R Jones was made Ring champion but it was Michalczewski who beat the man S Briggs was thought of in some cases as lineal champion, but at the same time you had L Lewis and E Holyfield as belt holders with greater resumes T Fury won the lineal title but then didn't fight for a period of time where other fighters picked up titles and could be considered to have better resumes during that time The Ring moved Froch to #2 which I feel was to crown the winner of the S6 as the Ring champion, bur consider that was when Bute was still around undefeated and Froch had lost to Kessler Froch lost to Kessler but I think it was beating Abraham coming off a loss that he was soon moved above Kessler So I also have to go on resume
The Ring also changed their rule about the #1 vs #2, and that diluted the meaning of the belt. Khan vs Danny Garcia should never have been for The Ring belt, it was ridiculous.
I only rate the ring belt if the champion is holding an alphabet title and also holds true lineal status like Shakur Stevenson at 140, Tyson Fury after beating Deontay Wilder, or Floyd Mayweather in his many lineal championship belts. It’s hard to rate the ring belt when there’s not another belt attached to it, Shannon Briggs after foreman for example. I believe Casamayor vs Marquez, Calzaghe vs Hopkins, Pacquiao vs Barrera and Hatton would hold much more significance if an alphabet belt was sprinkled on top of them. Pacquiao has a weird case though and gets a pass because Barrera and Hatton were active champions who had just beat the reigning champions in their respective weight class(WBC 126 champion Erik Morales and IBF 140 Paulie Malignaggi) and Pac tore through both of them so his championship status in those weight classes shouldn’t be questioned.
