The world has gone mad. Fans dont know what p4p is!

This thread is not directed at telling knowledgable boxing fans what they already know fine well, it is for helping guys who are on this forum taking part in pound-for-pound and head-to-head discussions, when it is clear they do not know what either term means.

Over the past few weeks, more and more I have seen pound-for-pound being worked out on this basis:
p4p = h2h / weight
This is wrong, wrong to the point of ludicrous.

One guy who continually promotes this absurd view of p4p is our village idiot and resident Calzaghe obsessive ChinahandJoe. In the thread 'Calzaghe The Greatest Fighter of the Last 25 Years', Joey dismissed me with comments like these, from page 43 of that thread:
_____________________________________________________________
The wisdom of CHJ is in italics:


P4P is head to head.
By definition all that matters is skill and weight. Greatness doesn't come into it.
A weight lifter can be given a P4P ranking, his greatness doesn't come into it. It is how much he lifts per pound of his own body. Any professor of semantics would back me up here and would agree Joe Calzaghe is the P4P aka H2H number one of all time.

P4P is H2H*(Weight)^-1
Weight and fighting ability, this is clear as you can make a P4P list of weight lifters. The ignorance on display here is almost moderately frustrating, but I will be patient.
____________________________________________________________

This way of thinking has led to laughable threads such as the current one:
'Who Beats Pacquiao Head To Head?'
With the poll including among others- Pavlik, Calzaghe, Mijares, Calderon.

To help in increasing awareness of what pound-for-pound and head-to-head actually are, I will include a post from yesterday and my response to it:
(the original poster knows p4p doesn't equal h2h/weight, but this is a good example of discussion of the subject)
___________________________________________________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Butcher
Even IF you believe Lewis was the best of British (which I most certainly do not) its a scandal that he should make a top 5 list of the last 15 yrs, thats outrageous.
Imagine every fighter was roughly the same size & weight but with their same abilities & strengths... there is NO WAY Lewis is gonna beat guys like PBF, Morales, Jones, Barrera, Whitaker, Calzaghe, Mosely, Pacman or DLH.... No way. Get real people.



Mate, seriously, this is NOT what pound-for-pound is and it is NOT how it is worked out, think about what you're saying here, it is absolutely ludicrous.

Do you mean to tell me that when deciding if Lennox Lewis should be placed higher than Ricardo Lopez p4p, you either imagine a 5ft 4in and 7 stone Lennox Lewis fighting Lopez, or a 6ft 5in and 17 stone Ricardo Lopez fighting Lewis??

I am honestly not being rude mate honestly, but I have no idea where you got this idea from, but it absolutely is NOT what pound-for-pound is, the very idea is psychopathic!!!!

If you imagine that you so so radically change the size of a boxer for a fight, then he completely loses exactly what made him the fighter he is- this CANNOT be done, it makes no sense whatsoever. Of course you are going to think Shane Mosley would box rings round Lennox Lewis because he would be much faster and has better skills etc, but that is only because by nature, a lightweight needs those attributes to compete at world level. A heavyweight does not. He needs bulk and strength and power. If you imagine Mosley to be a heavyweight then at 16st, he cannot be that same quicksilver mover and puncher, so he is then a completely different fighter. If you imagine Lewis to be a lightweight, you can't imagine a 5ft 7in 135lbs guy standing flat-footed and lining up head shots, as that is not what a lightweight could ever do.

You can determine who was better between current and past fighters by H2H- if they fought at the same weight. You can decide who was better between Hagler and Monzon by imagining what you think would happen if they fought, because then you aren't changing anything about them, you're just taking both men and putting them in the ring.

But to decide properly pound-for-pound who was better, the way you work this out is by looking at how they performed against the men they fought, how much better they were than the best fighters in their weight division at the time.

Example: In my opinion, Roberto Duran is a better fighter pound-for-pound than Joe Frazier. I think this because Duran showed he was better than the best fighters he fought by a greater margin than Frazier was. Duran at lightweight got the better of everyone he fought, looked far far better than most of the guys he fought, and he fought many great fighters and took on many difficult and dangerous challenges, and did this more regularly and with greater ease than Frazier did.
I do not think this because if I blew up Duran to 16st or shrunk Frazier down to 135lbs, Duran would win a fight between them, because by definition this is impossible.

It's the same as saying I think Laila Ali is better p4p than Roy Jones Jr, because if you imagine Ali as a man, she would win a fight between the two. But she isn't a man! And obviously imagining her as a man (aside from being very very wrong!) would completely change the fighter she is!!
___________________________________________________________


OK, so that was my explanation for this mental trend of h2h/weight not having any relevance or meaning or significance in boxing, and hopefully the many people who commented in the Pacquiao thread will see how ridiculous considering him fighting Pavlik or him fighting Calderon is.

To further prove the point about pound-for-pound not being h2h/weight, I refer you to the Wikipedia definition of the term:

Pound-for-pound is the term used in

This content is protected

,

This content is protected

and other

This content is protected

to describe a fighter's value in relation to fighters of different weight classes.
It is often said to have been created to describe world

This content is protected

and

This content is protected

champion

This content is protected

.

This content is protected

Robinson is one of the most accomplished fighters of all time, but his supporters realized that, while he could beat anyone in his own class, as a Middleweight he would not be able to beat a top

This content is protected

. Hence, Robinson was called the pound-for-pound best without being expected to beat much larger fighters, under the belief that he as a Middleweight was still a better quality fighter than any fighter fighting at heavier or lighter weights than him.

To put it in my own words as simply as possible:

Pound-for-pound is for deciding who is BETTER between two boxers, not who would WIN.

H2H is for deciding who would WIN between two boxers.

Pound-for-pound can be used to decide between ANY two fighters at any weights, because you are rating them on how good they were at their own weight and their overall greatness, it has nothing to do with H2H unless the two fighters in question fought at the same weight.



Any comments, even critical, would be appreciated. Cheers guys

 

I think p4p is a combination of both. It can't be just resume or ability, it's both. Two examples:

IMO Marco Antonio Barrera has a better resume than Floyd Mayweather, but I think Mayweather had more ability. I place Mayweather above Barrera p4p.

IMO Naseem Hamed had more ability than Johnny Tapia, but a weaker resume. I rank Tapia higher than Hamed p4p.

P4P is a combination of resume and ability. Take each case on its own merits, and evaluate them fairly considering both factors. That's my idea of p4p.

 

He may often be tongue in cheek with his Calzaghe comments, but he has regularly stated that p4p=h2h/weight, I have seen the guy state it in many discussions I haven't even been involved in. He clearly does think that- as many others seem to as well, it's not one of his one-off "hilarious" jokes. He's just a moron.