How can you rank fighters you didn't see on tape?

If you haven’t seen them that you really shouldn’t go too into detail arguing about their skills, technique, how they’d do in mythical matches (I really dislike MM’s) but you can absolutely measure their greatness, their accomplishments and such as it is all documented and easy enough to reference and compare.

Because I haven’t seen Greb I can’t say he’s greater than, say, Paulie Malignaggi, who I’ve seen a lot of?

 

That's what we lawyers call an "easy case" - where the answer is clear and obvious to all.

But what about Greb v. say, Hagler? Or Roy Jones?

I don't think poring BoxRec alone is sufficient for such "difficult" cases.

 

Can you point me in the direction of the raw data, that shows a dramatic decline in the number of pro boxers?

Are you saying, that there are fewer registered pro boxer today than… say, 50-60 years ago?

 

See for me, I have two lists. Best (skill, Speed, Power) and Greatest (legacy, résumé, title defences)

I can't rank any fighter I've never seen on film as one of the best.
I can rank them as the greatest due to not needing to see them on film for rankings

 

Perfectly OK to rate fighters you haven't seen. Greb comes to mind as an example... Do your research, read the fight reports. Plenty of knowledgeable boxing people who were their ringside and lived thru it. And being ringside fight after fight is a lot more than most of us can say here

 

There are a number of books and periodical articles that examine this - both in terms of anecdotal stories and raw data.

For instance, in chapter 3 of Mike Silver's recent book, The Arc of Boxing, he notes that there were as many as 10,000 U.S. professional boxers licensed ANNUALLY (!!!) in the 1920s and 1930s; by early 200s, the TOTAL number of US professional boxers declined to fewer than 3,000.

This is an incredibly shrinking pool. The numbers I've looked in the past for South Korea is even worse, for instance. And I suspect the same for Japan (though there has been a mini-renaissance of sorts in recent years).

Edit: As I'd like to say when you are examining the phenomenon of being big fish in a small pond:

Being the best fighter today is a bit akin to saying you have the biggest ***** in a Korean sauna.

 

I am not saying you cannot; but you have to be more tentative or provisional with your conclusions. Approach it with a bit more humility and incertitude, that is.

 

There are almost certainly less fighters and less fights these days than in years gone by.
Whether the reduction in quantity necessitates a reduction in quality is debatable though.

 

If we are talking about a marginal decline, then perhaps you are right.

But we are talking about a decline where there are fewer than 10 percent of the fighter pool from, say, half a century ago. And the situation is far worse in other countries - e.g. South Korea.

 

I don't want to name names, but some Korean promoters would tout up-and-coming Korean fighters to me as championship hopefuls in recent years who couldn't even be top 10 domestic fighters in the boxing heydays of the 80s. The decline in quality, too, is just pathetic...

When there is that kind of exponential decline in quantity, I don't see how you avoid a qualitative decline as well.

 

So today the number of registered pro fighters today is less than 10% of what it was half a century ago?

I honestly wasn't aware, that the decline was that steep!

 

To play devils advocate, couldn't it just be more of the lower level are fighting as amateurs rather than jumping into the pro ranks?

 

Speaking for myself only, I don't. I dont rate them high but I dont dismiss them either, I'm neutral.

For guys like Harry Greb, he has wins over fighters we do have clear records and footage of (Gene Tunney for instance) so in his case I have some wiggle room to try and figure out where to rank him in his own era. But even then, books and records can only do so much. Without an eye test i simply won't rate them against other time periods.

 

Yes, the reduction in numbers is stupendous. It's like the reduction of the farming population in the U.S. relative to 200 years ago?

 

The problem is that there is a corresponding reduction in amateur boxer population - as well as the number of trainers, boxing gyms, etc.