The Transnational Boxing Rankings

It isn't so much re writing rankings as recognising that the rankings were ridiculous.

Bute was ranked higher than Froch going into the super 6, it was only convenience that allowed Froch to move higher because of the high profile nature of the winning fight.

Yes Froch did go on to beat both Bute and Kessler but that is a retrospective ****ysis, at the time Ward, Bute and Kessler were all considered superior to Froch.

 

Obviously we know Froch was the next best SMW behind Ward but back then he was coming off a loss and Bute was considered better than him.

by ridiculous I don't mean the concept of ranking Froch above Bute was ridiculous, I meant that the manner in which they changed the rankings to crown above new champion was ridiculous.

 

It wasn't reasonable, though, Mac.

Ridiculous may be a bit ham-fisted (there have been worse rankings), but flat-out "wrong" suits.

Kessler had a recent h2h victory over Froch. Neither of Froch's wins in the intervening year-plus ought to have really negated that (although combined, they did carry more weight than Kessler's one follow-up victory over Bouadla)

Bute (at least, if not Kessler) over Froch is a must at that particular juncture in time - for reasons upon which I elucidated already, none of which have been negated. The position of Froch ahead of him as of right then is really indefensible. Not reasonable. Anything you might use to argue otherwise relies upon events that unfolded after that point in time. Based on recent form, as of then, Froch had no case to be ahead of Bute. If there's one to be reasonably made, I'd love to hear it...but I haven't yet. I just keep hearing everything reduced to "Well that is how the Ring had it" and "it wasn't unreasonable". The Ring was dead wrong on this one, and that's fairly plain to see.

 

Favorite for the Super Six?? Come on... According to whom??

That, I would call ridiculous.

Abraham hadn't even debuted at the weight. Anybody who called him the favorite heading into the S6 (as opposed to proven world class super middleweight Kessler) was as wrong as the Ring are for calling Froch #2 when he met Ward.

I remember a few loonies suggesting they favored Abraham to become tourney king and I laughed them off, because that was loony talk even then. I never thought all that much of him even at middleweight (and was disappointed that he never jumped in the fray with Pavlik and Taylor, at the weight to prove which of them was the best of the 160lb champs of that era) and there was absolutely no reason to believe he was going to move up and be a better 168lber than Kessler.

Dirrell and Ward, alright, they were green prospects. So if you want to say that perception for some was that a champion a division south would be seen as having more of a chance than a couple of kids that hadn't stepped up in class yet, fine. As for Taylor, he was coming off that brutal and bitterly disappointing ahead-on-the-cards knockout loss to Froch. So you can say Abraham was favored more so than any of them, and was 3rd most likely to succeed. I don't see any reasonable case - and this is going by where things stood back then (and was my opinion back then) - for Abraham being favored in the S6 more than Froch, let alone Kessler.

That argument is worthless, sorry.

 

Froch couldn't be second, no. Bute was, for reasons I've stated, pretty cut and dry ahead of him on paper - and it wasn't close. And no, Abraham & Johnson (squeaking by Johnson at that, with Bute comfortably defeating him) don't override the h2h victory Kessler had over Froch, in his own country or not, and however close you thought it was. A h2h win on paper is a h2h win on paper and beating an up-jumped one-dimensional middleweight champ in his sop****re effort at 168lbs and then squeaking by Johnson (who Bute handled with relative ease) doesn't erase that h2h win. It trumps Bouadla, sure, but that h2h win looms and would take a lot more than what Froch did in the meantime to counteract. So really it wasn't even close between Kessler and Froch. He was #4 at best, end of. If you want to anoint Ward based on it being a #1 vs. #4 meeting, that's one thing, but Froch wasn't #2, I don't care what Ring said.

But alright, we're going nowhere.

 

Tyson Fury ranked #2 contender at heavyweight !
How did this occur ?

 

Don't even!!!!! :-(

 

:bart:think