The Transnational Boxing Rankings

On it. :yep

Just let me get back to my desk. (out for coffee, don't want to risk all that box ticking on my phone with its tiny keys and my sausage fingers, that's just asking for ominous happenings)

 

I think that's a decent compromise...provided that the champion is indeed inactive and not just perceived as being weak. Like, I don't feel that GGG beating Geale would have crowned a new lineal champion because Cotto had just beaten Martinez, if that makes sense.

 

Also, what length of time would constitute "inactivity" for a champion...?:think

 

The garbage's been taken out. :good

 

Here's my problem, though, is that is really is such a slippery, arbitrary slope, we're saying "Okay, we've decided collectively that Ward is the man in the division and that can't be taken from him no matter how long he jerks everybody about."

Fine, but..

Meanwhile you have Garcia, who is also an undefeated title-holder, same as Ward, except we haven't given him that distinction (which never was a tangible something he earned in the ring, nor did Ward) so through no fault of his own doesn't get the same treatment as Ward for being essentially the same thing - an unbeaten world title holder that never lost his belt in the ring but may or may not have vacated or been stripped by whatever org for inactivity - just because it was decided that Ward is the man at 168lbs but Garcia, simply because Uchiyama happens to exist and be there in his way, isn't viewed as such when, less Uchiyama, he'd be as much above the rest of the field at 130lbs as Ward is at 168lbs and thus due the same consideration, you'd think...

There's just such little difference, just a semantic one really, between the pair of things, for it to carry implications that severe (one stripped, the other Scot-free on the same charge)

 

Technically speaking though Ward didn't do this did he?

I mean the top 3 were ward, bute and kessler. Yes froch went on to beat 2 of the 3 but only politics prematurely rose him to 2 in the rankings.

 

It would be absolutely criminal to strip Ward due to inactivity caused by promotional issues. To do so would ultimately reward his promoter and, in a way, endorse the ass-backwards politics of boxing. It would also confuse the situation @ Super Middle causing further harm to the sport.

 

Ring, though. Granted there was no such thing as TBRB until the following year, but does that mean you just fall back on Ring as gospel for everything before 2012? Even though part of the whole point of TBRB is to provide a superior alternative to Ring and other flawed systems? :huh

It was anything but consensus that Ward and Froch were #1 and #2 respectively in December 2011. Sure, it may have been that way per the Ring but plenty had Bute and Kessler (neither of whom Froch had beaten yet, mind - in fact at that point in time it was Kessler with the 1-0 h2h victory over Froch, and it was as of then not all that long ago to be discounted when ordering) ahead of him.

 

Was it reasonable, though?

Again, the h2h interplay between Kessler and Froch loomed still pretty large. It was the year before. If you want to say no, that was too long ago to factor in, and say furthermore that decisions over Abraham (then 1-1 at the weight, beating only a fellow up-jumped middleweight in Taylor) and Johnson (elderly and only by MD!) trump a KO of Medhi Bouadla as far as "recent work", then okay, that can be, though stretching the limits a bit, called reasonable. That still only solves half the equation though. Bute's run-up in the year before Ward vs. Froch saw him knocking out two ranked contenders in Magee and Mendy (both proven, longtime super middleweights, unlike Abraham) and pitching a near shutout over the same exact Glen Johnson. Night and day, their Johnson performances. Bute's absolutely slayed Froch's. Can't be overstated. Also, the fact that he more or less dominated Magee before knocking him out in 10 lends quality there, whereas in 2006 Froch took eleven to do the same and Magee had bagged roughly half the rounds off him by that point. Surely outperforming Froch (and by that wide a margin) against the same version of Johnson and scoring knockouts of Magee (then Euro champ and riding a five-year streak, and whom Bute had an easier time with) and unbeaten Mendy (though he was KTFO in his eliminator and skated in via DQ only because of Bika's mad-dog antics) trump a decision over new-to-168lbs, had-never-beaten-a-168lber Abraham?