"Morphy Number" lineage in boxing

it would probably be best started with Joe Louis then if your going to try and establish such a measure. Maybe Dempsey.

 

Interesting idea, however, I don't know how to implement the calculation. So, maybe someone can do the calculation and present a summary of the result. Let's do three different calculations starting from Sullivan, Dempsey and Louis and compare the results.

 

Fascinating. So everyone who fought Sullivan would be era 1. And then anyone who fought any Sullivan opponent, yet didn't fight Sullivan himself, would be era 2. Who would then be era 3? Would it be the earliest man who fought the guy who kicked off era 2, yet didn't fight the era 2 pioneer himself?

 

I never expected to see Paul Morphy mentioned on a boxing forum lol. I love watching Morphy's games.

Is the lineage rule related to the fact that Morphy was essentially the first unofficial world champion? Steinitz was the first official world chess champion, but Steinitz would have never defeated Morphy had Morphy not lost his mind and walked away from chess at his peak.

 

My Dad (Master's Degree in Applied Statistics, retired as Vice President of Statistical Process Control, in a large corporation, over many world wide factories) did something similar with boxing. He is only a casual boxing fan, so this is a purely mathematical thing with him, no biases. My Grandfather asked him to do this, and it produced a ranking system with the Heavyweights, with mathematical weights for eras, allowing for evolution (somewhat favoring more recent eras). We are not real close, but the next time I speak with him, I will ask my Dad to explain to me how he did that. I think the years they fought had something to do with it.

EDIT: I spoke with Dad. He is coming here tomorrow for supper. He will bring his laptop with him and show me what he did. So far, he mentioned years fought, weights of opponents, weight of the person himself, and quality of competition. He even used math somehow to determine the quality of the competition. He evidently tried very hard to keep opinions out of it.

 

Hi, mate! I'm a chess fan and also fascinated by the Morphy number. I read an article about it years ago (unfortunately, it seems no longer available) that said Paul Morphy's choice had nothing to do with the linearity of the world title, but with the fact that Paul Morphy is a legendary chess figure.

 

‘Battling Morphy’ as he was known was a cagey and calculating fighter. Set traps. A lot of his opponents were mere pawns in his dangerous hands.

Not to be confused with a Reg Morphy, a 1920s Australian featherweight who went 16-5-2.

Then there’s this guy …

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