The actual skill level of Jim Braddock

Tommy Farr (2)
Max Baer (Ch.)
Art Lasky (3)
John Henry Lewis (4, LHW)
Jimmy Slattery (4, LHW)
Pete Latzo (10, LHW)

The Farr fight and Lewis fight most people felt like he lost.
The Baer fight was very close and made closer by point deductions, just like Farr and Lewis.
Slattery was a bad drunk at the time he fought Braddock. That wasnt a secret or a revisionism it was in the papers of the day.
Latzo was at his best at WW and like Braddock lost 1/3 of his fights, the vast majority of those losses came after he moved up from WW and frankly Im not convinced he was rated by any sanctioning body particularly when he fought Braddock. He was nothing more than a middling LHW.

You are using Ring ratings and not just their ratings but their annual ratings which dont tell if a fighter was actually rated when that fight was held. The Ring was a magazine, not a sanctioning body.

When you have to go to such lengths as to claim that winning several controversial decisions over rated fighters, several of whom were nothing special in order to paint Braddock as more than a journeyman it really ignores the weight of his actual record. I mean Latzo lost a third of his fights, Tommy Farr lost a third of his fights, more actually. Lasky was nothing special, Slattery was a drunk, etc. To ignore the context behind these "wins" and hold them up as proof that because Braddock "beat" six rated fighters in an 85 fight career that witnessed him fail to win 33 of those fights and three of those six "marquee" wins are controversial it kind of defies logic to pretend the guy was anything more than a damn lucky journeyman. His record of achievements is almost comically weak for a champion.

You can give McAvoy the benefit of the doubt but its no secret he wasnt an impartial ref. Thats simply his history. Its easily traceable. Regardless, it does him no favors that he was twice instrumental in potentially altering the outcomes of two of Braddock's biggest wins.

 

We can agree on some of this stuff, disagree on others, but in regards to rankings I absolutely disagree, in this era in particular. The Ring, which was housed in MSG, was in the business of selling magazines and often acted as a promotional arm of East Coast promoters. Its ratings are every bit as flawed as modern ratings. Ive said before and Ill say it again, Nat Loubet himself told me Ring regularly rated fighters and featured fighters not on worth but as a means of selling magazines. Its often why you see oddball foreign fighters rated that had zero accomplishments. If they thought having a guys name in their magazine would sell in his hometown or country they would put it in. So no, at the time you wouldnt find better ratings than the NBA and Im not even sure they were regularly publishing their ratings this early. Between their own marketing motivations, their incestuous relationship with promoters, and ever present influence of the mob (which was exploding at this point) the Rings ratings were no better than anyone else and often worse.