BoxRec's supposed Ring Magazine's Annual World Ratings are wrong...

I think it could be a case of them calling the 'December' (February or March issue or whatever in later years) monthly ratings the 'Year End' ratings, which is correct. But there were also 'Annual Ratings' that might have been broader and slghtly diifferent?
As the photos @thistle posted show, Annual Ratings.
I do remember Annual Ratings even in the 1980s magazines, which graded a lot of boxers, after the top 10, with "A", "B", "C" etc, which might have been a later incarnation of annual ratings.
Lots of newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s actually noted Ring magazine annual ratings, so i can check there too.

 

Breakthrough!

The 1951 "year-end" ratings on Boxrec which claim to be from the Feb 1952 edition are actually the Feb 1st 1952 ratings from the Mar 1952 edition.

Details below:

I've looked at the year-end ratings for 1951, focussing on heavyweights.

According to Boxrec, the Ring ratings at the end of 1951 were published in the February 1952 edition, and were as follows:

Jersey Joe Walcott, Champion
Ezzard Charles
Rocky Marciano
Clarence Henry
Roland LaStarza
Karel Sys
Joe Louis
Cesar Brion
Joe Baksi
Bob Baker
Johnny Williams

Source - The Ring Magazine's Annual Ratings: 1951 - BoxRec

Now, I have a copy of the February 1952 edition, and it actually lists the following as the 1951 rankings:

Jersey Joe Walcott, Champion
Ezzard Charles
Rocky Marciano
Clarence Henry
Roland LaStarza
Joe Louis
Bob Baker
Cesar Brion
Rex Layne
Hein Ten Hoff
Joe Baksi

The magazine specifies that "these ratings are based on results from January 1 to December 20, inclusive" and that "the ratings listed below are the result of considerable thought and study and not recorded through mere guesswork. The RING editor has had the assistance of an able staff, consisting of his co-workers on the RING and his correspondents in gathering the data necessary for a world-wide ranking of pugilists as appears in this issue".

Source - Cover & Contents


Now, in case Boxrec have just picked up the wrong edition, I have checked both the January 1952 and March 1952 magazines.

January 1952 Magazine:

Jersey Joe Walcott, Champion
Ezzard Charles
Rocky Marciano
Roland LaStarza
Clarence Henry
Joe Louis
Bob Baker
Cesar Brion
Rex Layne
Hein Ten Hoff
Joe Baksi

The magazine specifies that these results are ending December 1, 1951.

Source - Contents

March 1952 Magazine:

Jersey Joe Walcott, Champion
Ezzard Charles
Rocky Marciano
Clarence Henry
Roland LaStarza
Karel Sys
Joe Louis
Cesar Brion
Joe Baksi
Bob Baker
Johnny Williams

The magazine specifies that these results are ending February 1, 1951.

Source - Contents

And these are an exact match for the 1951 "year-end" rankings on Boxrec, which purport to be from the Feb 1952 edition. They are actually the Feb 1 1952 rankings from the Mar 1952 edition.

 

This seems to be exactly what I’ve been trying to get at — @SimonLock has certainly found an example that, if we research and try to match what Boxrec has listed as annual rankings we can probably figure out where they got those rankings.

You seem intent that this is some kind of purposeful act on Boxrec’s part so they can for some reason manipulate past rankings with some nefarious purpose (I can’t see how they would profit from this, and yes they have their own rankings but who on earth really goes by those or pays attention to them).

I think it’s probably just a simple mistake. They had someone (perhaps an unpaid intern for all we know) look up the final rankings from each year from the first issue in the following year that seemed to encompass all results through the end of the year and they put those in a database. Or maybe they said ‘look up the annual rankings’ and someone saw the rankings in an early-month issue and mistook those for annual rankings.

Again, never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. People make mistakes. It happens. I suspect now more than ever that this is what happened.