When assessing individuals or eras, it's good to have a few tools to help you along. This thread is for brainstorming the major tools and techniques for analyzing boxing history. Whether it's boxrec, Ring rankings, or Zakman's unique chinchecking method, POST IT! Records 0.5) Amateur Boxing Records -- Lists of all Olympic medalists, US amateur boxing champions, and world amateur boxing champions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_medalists_in_boxing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Amateur_Championship http://www.hickoksports.com/history/wamboxingmen.shtml 1) Boxrec -- An invaluable source. You can find most aspects of a fighter's career here pretty quickly...everything from height and weight to who he fought, and when. The rankings are a little goofy, though, so don't take them too seriously. Their encyclopedia is a nice resource as well. http://www.boxrec.com/ http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Main_Page 1.5) Cyber Boxing Zone -- Think "boxrec old-style" and you get a pretty good idea. This one is invaluable for finding the records of less-documented fighters in the early part of the 20th century. It even includes the career records of the bareknucklers. http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/cyber.htm 2) Ring Magazine Ratings -- Recently, these have come under the influence of the Evil Golden Lord of Corruption (Oscar de la Hoya to civilians). For the past, though, these have proved invaluable. They give a very good idea of who the best fighters at any one point in time were, and it's a shame that they aren't used more often. http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/The_Ring_Magazine%27s_Annual_Ratings 2.5) IBHOF -- A reasonably good guide in establishing which fighters are and are not considered "all time greats" rather than merely top contenders. Also contains biographies and fairly interesting facts. http://www.ibhof.com/ Film 3) Flaws -- This is one of the methods brought to prominence by a cadre of revisionist Classic historians collectively known as the Amsterdamites. Rather than accepting a fighter's greatness at face value, they decide that film is infinitely more important in judging a fighter's legacy. Therefore, it is necessary for a new boxing historian to have a thorough grasp of the fundamentals of boxing--what's right and what will get you a painful right to the jaw. http://sports.expertvillage.com/interviews/boxing.htm http://sports.expertvillage.com/interviews/advanced-boxing.htm http://www.expertvillage.com/interviews/boxing-basics.htm This video is a summary of every possible boxing flaw. The degree to which a fight looks like this indicates how good the fighters are: [yt]XxWkmIi6exg[/yt] 4) Styles -- These are the basic building blocks of boxing literacy--boxer/swarmer/puncher. They help a great deal, though they're not infallible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_styles_and_technique 5) Youtube -- This site is the Internet's gift to boxing. it's one thing to be able to look at a man's record on boxrec, but quite another to actually see him against his best opponents on screen. Everyone from Fitzsimmons to McClellan is on here. www.youtube.com Other Useful Stuff 6) The Patented Zakman Chinchecking Method 7) Manuals and History Books -- Manuals are absolutely necessary to form a competent understanding of pre-30's boxing. History books give much-needed (free) information on earlier fighters. While I can't give you an exhaustive list of pre-30's manuals, I can direct you where to look for them. Google book search has pretty much everything under the sun: http://books.google.com/ 8 ) Irrational Hatred of a Certain Fighter -- This is essential for any good boxing historian. With Redrooster, it's Leonard. Zakman prefers Ruiz, Radar hates the Klitschkos, and Dr. Z disliked Johnson. Some industrious over-achievers like Revolver hate everyone. But in order to be taken seriously, you must have a bizarre, incomprehensible bias against a fighter or group of fighters. Me? I loathe that Fitzsimmons character. 9) Newspaper Accounts -- The New York Times works quite well, though there are many other online archives of newspapers that one can refer to when assessing a fight for which there is no film. Ibiblio has several, although many links are broken. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/nytarchive.html http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/inter...ivesindex.html http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.o...=1191011762593 10) Photographs of Early Fighters -- Closeups of physique and facial features. http://www.antekprizering.com/main_copy.html 11) Encyclopedias -- Wikipedia, as mentioned earlier, is sometimes questionable. Boxrec's boxing encyclopedia tends to be more accurate. Both are included for completeness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Main_Page
There is some seriously great stuff up there. Does anyone else think this should be stickied? If you do maybe say so in the thread or PM CT, it's probably not easy to sticky your own work without some backing. Imagine a new member arrive, knows about about boxing or boxing history then gets stuck into that lot - it will literally make them a better more informative poster.
How about something relating to knowledge of the wider world. Which brings in sports science (and the progression of all sports), steroid, globalisation and general advances in communications and technology. Surely these things are relevant too? The influx of Mexicans into the lower weight divisions that was not possible before.
Crosstrainer provided guidelines for using sources to do research. If these other principals and topics interest you, then do likewise by going out and finding resources to include in your debates.
Good ideas. Give me the relevant sources (that have some direct reference to boxing or sports) and I'll post 'em.
Why not? Take a look at the suggestions of other posters. They seem to think that it's worth keeping around permanantely. Besides, if we can finally provide people with real guidelines for doing serious research on boxing history, then maybe we'll have some valid debates around here. As it stands, there's way too much revisionism in this forum.
For records, I think another good source for Hall-of-Famers is the BOXING REGISTER put out by the Boxing Hall-of-Fame. The info here is not unique for the most part, although the essays might prove informative, but for modern fighters they do list complete records as well as whether opponents were rated at the time they were fought. It would be possible to dig such info up, but having it in one place is an invaluable tool. Also contains records of bareknuckle Hall-of-Famers going back to Figg, with essays.