The Transnational Boxing Rankings

LOLz at you 'accepting a surrender', while waving your white flag.

You've been Lacyied™ in brutal and embarrassing fashion and exposed as a deluded fanboy. Now pick up the towel you've thrown in and wipe that egg of your hideous face.

 

I think your ratings are pretty good overall. At Featherweight with Gary Russell beating Gonzalez and Lomanchenko having beaten Russell some months before. I think you positioned them correctly except Mares should have dropped too. I wonder did you consider that with Gonzalez having beaten Abner Mares in just a round Mares should have dropped in behind Gonzalez and Lomanchenko/Russell/Gonzalez moved up one more position? Overall I think your ratings are good but Mares is now very high up especially considering he has not fought high opposition since his one round KO.

 

'Champions' like Adonis Stevenson and Miguel Cotto expose the concept of 'lineal champion' as meaningless. A boxer should have to earn a championship shot by beating worthy contenders in the weight class. While Cotto-Martinez may have been a good matchup Cotto didn't deserve to fight the middleweight champion without fighting a proven middleweight. Now we're stuck with a light middleweight as a middleweight 'champion' who because he's outsized is obviously avoiding the best middleweights. He'll likely be defending his 'championship' at 155 against 154 lbers, or at best against second-tier middleweights. Stevenson similarly as a super middleweight shouldn't have got a fight against the light heavyweight champion Dawson, but what's of course made his championship claim hollow is his avoidance of the best light heavyweights since, especially Kovalev. Kovalev's proven himself more than Stevenson by beating more proven boxers in Hopkins and Pascal than Stevenson has. Every fan who mocks Stevenson's ducking of Kovalev knows it's wrong to consider him champion, and wrong to respect lineal championship claims generally. If the PBC as rumoured creates their own championships it would only further prevent worthy contenders from getting a shot at the lineal championship. If the TBRB rankings acknowledge a PBC champion like Stevenson or Danny Garcia as lineal champion non-Haymon boxers would be frozen out of a chance at the lineal championship.

But the point isn't that a champion should be stripped or the championship should be handed to someone else, but that as long as champions aren't obligated to fight top contenders and contenders aren't obligated to fight contenders of similar rank championhips have no legitimacy. The concept or term of champion of any sort in boxing shouldn't be accepted or used at all. As outrageous as the alphabets are they're pretty innocuous in the confusion of championships. At least they have some influence towards making elimination matches. As long as promotional businesses, boxers, and their representatives simply 'make' fights champions can't exist, end of. I first brought up the tenuousness of the ww 'championship' lineage, and I see many others have continued to make the point that Mosley may have been number 2 ahead of Cotto before he beat number 1 Margarito for lineal championship recognition. Pacquiao was irrelevant to the top 3 as it was January 2009, and Pac only just beat Oscar in his first fight at ww. But more than the subjectivity of whether Mosley deserved to be ranked higher than Cotto, the problem is that in such a disputable circumstance Mosley was the fighter given the Margarito fight! An eliminator rematch between Mosley and Cotto at the time would've shown who deserved to fight Margarito. A championship only makes sense if it's determined by matchups that are based on rankings, and those rankings are themselves based on results. You know, like a proper sport. It takes sticking your head in the sand to give such things as boxing'champions' and 'rankings' even passing seriousnessness. As long as the matchups are mostly arbitrary championships and rankings are essentially arbitrary too.

That's why most boxing fans would rather make p4p lists or compare ability than embrace any rankings or championship claims, not because they're misinformed about the greatness of such projects as the TBRB. You implicitly insult the intelligence of boxing fans with a lot of your replies, like insisting someone doesn't 'get it' if they question Stevenson as champion. Even a 'naive' fan who figures neither Mayweather or Pacquiao should be welterweight champion till they beat the other knows what's up more than the TBRB and their acolytes.

Enjoy the good matchups when they happen, but we're only deluding ourselves and damaging the possible competitive credibility of boxing as a sport if fans or worse media insist there's any meaning to a bout beyond itself. I say this as someone who for years accepted and kept up with lineal championship history, briefly embraced the TBRB, then spent a year trying to make a ranking system to more objectively determine lineal championships, that was basically a compromise between the TBRB and boxrec, before it became clearer and clearer that it's completely pointless. To fellow boxing fans: just give it up!!!

 

Well, it's great if you or other TBRB guys can acknowledge competitive matchmaking is more important than rankings or championships. But you seem to gloss over that in your optimism about the TBRB project. As I mentioned over a year ago, considering how fights have been made even historically acknowledged championships weren't perfect, but older lineal championships were of course fairer because the top fighters simply fought the best so much more than in the last few decades, and moreover stuck to a weight division so much more. Now the core of championships are broken: the only resolution is fair matchmaking and central organisation.

'Thankfully' the TBRB has fallen on deaf ears generally, from the majority of fans who know better. Rankings can't be 'trusted' if they don't determine matches. Uh, see the Mosley/Cotto issue.

 

Qwerty the Obsessive has not let you down. He won't tell you, so I will. He was initially supportive of the Transnational Rankings --until he got ambitious. He is on record admitting that our progress threatens his ambition to start his own rankings, thus the flailing, mile-long posts.

 

Boxing is a business and the promoters look for the easiest route to sell seats and to sell to the TVs. Ultimately it is the TV companies that are the most powerful in making the best matches. Rankings or Organisations don't come in to it.

The problem is that promoters and therefore fighters align with one TV station and if rival TV companies have the best two fighters in a division that fight is unlikely to happen. I have no doubt that both those fighters will want to fight. Only when a fighter has no other meaningful fights left can the mega fights be made.

It is not possible to make the best matches at all times, it is as simple as that.

 

An ambtion I may have had from September 2013 to June 2014. I pushed what I saw were problems with rankings like the Ring's and yours, I was especially zealous because I felt many other fans could've overlooked the inconsistencies of the basic model as I had for years. I went ahead and tried something, then after several months saw it wasn't enough, and realised any effort to establish rankings and championships is impossible and pointless. I changed my mind. Now it's occasional trolling that gives me meaning as a boxing fan

 

My only issue with the concept of linearity is the same it always has been, the lack of prestige the title holds.

I know someone will tell me the best fighter doesn't have to be the champion of the division and this is a fact which goes back as far as championship history itself, but it still remains my only grumble.

I'd love it if everyone bar lineal champions where not called champions and instead were called challengers, even by the media. "Well done kovalev, you have unified 3 titles but we can't call you champ until you beat stevenson" I don't actually disagree with titles, I think they serve a purpose, I just don't like the lack of clarity.

Not sure if this grumble of mine will ever be solved in my lifetime but I'd rather be part of the solution than the problem and that's why I personally refuse to rank Golovkin ahead of cotto presently. H2H he smashes him; I've no doubt he'd be a huge favourite. But that's only in my opinion the facts show it was cotto who beat martinez. I would like cotto and ward to leave their divisions and stop holding the championship hostage but it is their championship to hold.

 

Congratulations on winning first place @ the Special Olympics. Now run along like a nice re**** and pickup your prize...

 

Would it matter if the lineal championship held almost universal prestige as the only championship if Arum's power and Cotto's money-making prestige got Cotto the Martinez fight over the more deserving Golovkin? Multiple championships is a problem, but acknowledging a single championship only means something if the most deserving contenders get to compete for the championship. If competitive matchmaking rules boxing and the best fight the best a single championship will almost work itself out on it own.

 

Yes it would matter. No confusion that way. Golovkin would be seen as the most worthy challenger and not an alternate champ.

 

The idea is great, the rankings are questionable to say the least in many cases.