A points ranking system to legitimise boxing rankings and championships!!

After the Ring made the changes it did to its championship policy last year like many fans I felt its championship had lost credibility. But I now realise that both the Ring championship as well as the TBRB championship which attempted to replace it are flawed for a more fundamental reason and the same reason that all organisations that rank boxers are flawed: to truly establish legitimate champions rankings just cannot be determined by opinion polls. Even if the TBRB panel is free of promotional or business influence, its members are going to have varying awareness of boxers, especially of boxers in different areas of the world, and are also going to have individual prejudices based on their knowledge of the sport. A panel is necessarily an oligarchy arbitarily determining the ranking of boxers.

That opinion polling is not sufficient to rank boxers was made apparent when I looked up why Mayweather was not the legitimate welterweight champion. Mayweather should definitely not have won a vacant championship by beating Guerrero, but there is a case to be made for him becoming champion when he beat Mosley. The Cyber Boxing Zone did consider the 2009 Margarito-Mosley fight to be for the vacant lineal championship. Deciding that this was a championship fight was clearly subjective, because it depended on whether Mosley was considered number 2 or not. Margarito would have moved to number 1 when he beat Cotto. The Ring only dropped Cotto to number 2, but if someone felt the loss should move Cotto further down then they would make Mosley number 2.

If opinion polling is used to determine ranking there will every now and then be situations where it is not clear who the number 1 or 2 boxer is. There needs to be an objective and systematic way of ranking boxers strictly on accomplishment.

A points ranking system is important because if accepted by fans, media, boxers, and especially promoters it would force boxers to fight more often and fight boxers ranked above them if they wanted to move up the rankings and earn a shot at the championship.

I'll add that the obvious misranking of boxers in the Boxrec rankings is no argument against a points ranking system. The factors that the Boxrec system uses to determine a boxer's ranking often aren't even an indication of his success, and the system is generally bizarre and confusing.

Of course more about the system and its organisation would have to be worked out and I'm open to reconsidering anything I've proposed. Anyone who would like to offer constructive criticism, or even better would like to be part of organising and implementing this idea should contact me. This needs to be a completely democratic process, and not my personal project.

www.worldboxingrankings.proboards.com

 

I don't think creating some perfect machine is a solution. It should be able to be simple. The tennis ranking system is fairly simple. There are people who have a desire for honest rankings, but even people who are fairly impartial only want to offer their own rankings!

Pardon my ignorance, but what's the BCS?

By the way, here's the boxrec system, if anyone can make anything of it. The problem is they try to do too much, and the criteria is so complex that the results of course are often senseless. What should be needed more than wins and losses?

http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/BoxRec_Ratings_Description

 

But a points ranking shouldn't scale points based on method of victory, the scorecards of a decision, or the quality of the opponent beyond his ranking, as boxrec overambitiously does.

So with my system Wilder wouldn't have fought more than three lower-end top-50 opponents, which I guess wouldn't give him more than a top-30 ranking. Isn't that more accurate than boxrec's 13 ranking?

My intent wasn't to compare a potential objective ranking system with boxrec though. A ranking should be able to be determined just by wins and losses and opponent rank. Aren't there any tennis fans here who think the ATP comparison is helpful? :yep

 

I disagree with you and think you sound too cynical and resigned! Style points should not be given. Neither is boxing about stats, and a mathematical formula isn't necessary. You win, you should earn the right to move on to bigger and better things. Rankings matter because, as I mentioned, they can determine who gets to fight for the legit championship, and the championship should matter.

Yes, money and prestige have always made the fights in boxing. Boxers wouldn't be prevented from electing to fight a bigger money fight while a ranking system was still in place and at least somewhat accepted. But I also of course want there to be more regulation in boxing so it is ruled at least somewhat less by money and prestige.

 

As interesting as the boxrec rankings are as one comparison, my idea was not about boxrec or a computer ranking system, by the way

 

Oh no, I don't think ranking has any right to directly dictate matchmaking. I just think fans and media need an objective ranking system to know who the legit champion is, as well as where the contenders stand. My optimism about this affecting greater change on the sport was only my hope that if accepted by fans and media, it would in turn be accepted by promoters. It would be change from the ground up, not dictated from promoters or authorities. I'm aware that's dreaming, but there's no revolution without a dream first! But of course the media who should be serving the fans serve the promoters more.

I don't have any practical plans! I've just realised there's always a potential for corruption at worst and confusion at best if 'opinion polls' are used to compile rankings. I don't think my 50 point system can be prone to favouritism or bias. The only favouritism could be in promoters making a fight for a boxer just for him to get ranking points, but that's not inherent in the ranking system.

I think the word 'system' is misleading people here. An automatically-applied fancy algorithym didn't even cross my mind! Just an objective means of determining ranking. It shouldn't have to be much more difficult than ranking teams in a sports league.

I'll watch what the AIBA does too. With scheduled tournaments it should definitely be possible and not too difficult to create a codified ranking system.

 

I don't think any ranking should take more than a win or loss into account. A bad decision should have to be accepted. Overturning decions for ranking purposes is a slippery slope. Also, a dominant decision shouldn't be given more weight in a ranking than a close decision, especially because scoring swings of course don't indicate exactly how the fight went. To use my tennis example, more ranking points aren't given for winning a tennis match by more games. And it's not fair to lighter punchers to award more ranking points for knockouts. Weighting wins like that is why I don't think the boxrec rankings are close to what I'm asking for.

There is subjectivity in judging, yes. But though it's unfortunate an objective ranking system has to accept the subjectivity of judging as definitive. Just like tennis, in boxing a win should be a win.

Regarding competing in different divisions, my system makes it pretty easy: a boxer would have separate ranking points in any division in which he fought a top-50 opponent in the previous three years.