I think they're quite accurate about the fights they list, although their "newspaper decision" verdicts are sometimes highly debatable; the main "inaccuracy" in their statistics on old-timers is that they just don't have an awful lot of those guys' fights. There are some guys listed on boxrec as 0-0-0 going into a given fight who are described in newspaper accounts as being on a run of 11 consecutive knockouts or something of that sort, and some guys who are listed as having two fights in their entire careers, 10 years apart and both against famous world championship caliber fighters; in both cases, boxrec simply doesn't have the majority of those guys' fights. There are a lot of fighters whose only known matches are against the famous champion types, which is why there are so many guys listed as having had only one or two fights on boxrec. And even among the elite-level guys, the farther back you go, the more likely it is that substantial portions of their career will be missing. The database is growing more complete all the time, though. Another side note, they do sometimes have what seems to me to be unbalanced reporting on given fights in the commentary area; for example, on Ezzard Charles vs. Elmer Ray I, they quote the RING magazine account, which makes the fight out to have been a highway robbery, but the majority of accounts I've seen do not jibe with this version of events, and it would seem fair to at least note scorecards/accounts from other press.
In terms of Dates, pretty good. In terms or weights, spotty. In terms of results, decent, but the news paper decisions lack multiple sources that say the same thing. It is said that box rec has about 5-10% of the boxing fights from 1900 to present.
OK, thanks .. reason for the question was that some of the statistics on guys like Greb just blow me away at times and I'd like to be able to be fairly confident that what I'm reading is accurate enough on a fighter like Harry Greb. For example, the stats show that on Xmas day, 1923 Greb fights Loughran in a 10rd fight at 168Ibs ... then on Jan 18th 1924, takes on Johnny Wilson at 158Ibs for a 15 rounder .... 10Ibs lighter in 24 days and still wins. Not to mention this was coming off his loss to Tunney which he fought at 171. :admin
They pull some boners: 1. The worst I have seen is continually listing the Joe Louis-Johnny Davis 4 round fight in 1944 as a title defense. It was an exhibition according to the New York Times. Louis had fought the night before and would also fight the next night. No one at the time, such as Nat Fleischer, thought this was a championship fight. Louis was the heavyweight champion, not an obscure fighter. I think Fleischer would have known if this was a championship fight. 2. I wonder about these obscure fights they discover either early in a famous fighters career or very late. As most of these fights didn't get big writeups in the press, I think they probably mix up fighters of similar names and what have you. They might be able to do research which was beyond Nat Fleischer's ability, but I wonder if they can tell off a name in the paper if the fighter named is actually the famous fighter they credit or debit this result to. How many Jack Johnsons have there been, for example?
Gotta be very careful what you take as gospel on BoxRec, B. Was checkin' on the pro record of Michael DeLaRue, a brawling welter that fought for my amateur team. He was listed as having died in a fight, when he was happily retired, working as a longshoreman. It took them years to correct. --------------------------------------------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP6AwknmjkU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0_HOWlGD6o
Its a great site, I remember waiting for the ring record book every year to come out and it was late every year, at least you have a good idea of fights. A lot of the old timers have fighters with 2-3- or 0 fights and we know thats not acurate but its hard to do what they do.....its not perfect but its still an amazing site and when you spot something wrong let them know so they can correct it
