How do you pick a top ten p4p? Do you purely look at the fighters resume, do you base it on how talented you think they are? Or a mix of the two? And how different would your lists look if you had one based on resume vs one on talent?
Defenitely a mix Going only on resume, it clearly favors old establised and priviledged fighters. Going only on the eye test, there's the chance of hypejobs and frontrunners being put in there. All in all it's massively flawed anyway. If you look at many "official" and fan P4P lists over the years, You'll see many names in there that were clearly overrated at the time or went on a bad streak because they were over the hill/shot big names.
If it was based purely on the eye test then someone's list wouldn't change, ever. Because when their list changes, that means they were wrong. Like when people say, "the winner of Kovalev/ Ward is p4p #1", well by the eye test logic, that means they don't know how to make a proper list and they actually do base it on resume too.
Resume as it applies to their most recent fights and the manner in which the fights were won/lost. If a fighter has been out of the game long enough to be considered temporarily retired then I have to drop them from lists but when they come back if they prove to be in as good of form as they were before their break against a top fighter than their previous resume is once again considered. Ward will obviously be top if he beats a game Kovalev. Mikey Garcia as well. Haye has a lot to prove though.
I agree with everything but weight class movement. Heavyweight can't move anywhere but down. Guys like Golovkin and Rigondeaux are excellent in their weight classes which , unlike a majority of fighters, is their actual natural weight class. P4P list are just like beauty contest in Latin America. Whoever has the most money behind them is usually at the top of the list. Guys like Mayweather, Pacquiao, and Ward are the rare breed that had the competition at their weight class to match their skills. I don't hate on GGG or Rigo being on any top P4P list because of who they fought. I remember those same guys at HBO who praise GGG for the guys he has faced, hated on Roy Jones Jr for his choice of competition level at his peak.
With heavyweight at times it is harder to quantify, when you get a HW that has a downright elite skillset (which isn't often). With the exception of Wlad and Vitali (regarding this era only of course), I've tended to leave most HW's out of the equation (due to the eye test). Most just aren't that skillful compared to their contemporaries. The jumping up in weight class is probably the purest means to test the p4p theory, but I won't keep someone off a list because they don't. Utter dominance of their weightclass is definitely a factor as well. Which again goes back to why I included the Klit brother's as examples.
