What Is The Definition Of A World Class Fighter

I think beating at least two notable opponents while giving an elite man a good run in a galant losing effort qualifies for being world class. Razor Ruddock for example beat Michael Dokes and Bonecrusher smith while they were past prime, but were still top 10 at the time and then turned around and gave Tyson a good fight.

 

Well you have the amateurs, then you have the regional titles, then you have the world titles. So I assume that a world class fighter is one who would be capable of holding a world title.

 

World class to me is a guy who can 'handle' himself when fighting the best, the top 10 etc.

He might win some, he might lose some, but hell make a fight of it.

 

A fighter who demonstrates the ability to beat a fighter ranked in the top 10 of his division, and who maintains a decent career in general during his prime years (i.e a 'bum who pulls off a single good victory (due to an injury to his quality opponent or something like that) likely isn't 'world class').

 

That is what a journeyman used to be before we used that time to describe stiffs who fall over at the mere hint of a punch (they used to be called jobbers or bums)

 

Of course, even among the various titlists there are levels and degrees of skill. 17 divisions and 4 major sanctioning bodies means that there are usually 50 titlists at any given time, some unified some not. So that means maybe 50 out of roughly 17,500 professional fighters are world class fighters, but only the top 10 of that 50 are regarded as the A level, and the rest are B level. Contenders would then be C level and journeymen D level or something like that.

I was looking at boxrec recently and by every fighters name there's his world ranking. If you look at that, I wondered, could you get a sense of how competitive the division is. Some divisions have 1500 fighters in them and some only have about 750, which implies that not all division titles are equal.

 

To me the difference between journeyman and world class is, journeymen lose more than they win and world class is the opposite.

Might not be the best example but Chisora is a journeyman whereas someone like Haye is world class (as much as i despise him)

 

I generally think a world class fighter is a fighter who has beaten someone in the top 15 or so and can be very competitive with someone in the top 10 (lets face it a lot of the time lower top 10 guys arent really title threats).

There is an alternate definition though and that is if a member of your family was a boxer, regardless of what his record looks like, he was world class.

 

To me a journeyman is a guy who knows how to fight, can acquit himself well, not get steamrolled in the big dance or over-awed by it but can typically be counted on to lose the big ones barring the rare upset.

 

A fighter who has consistent success against his contemporaries

 

World Champion and/or Top 10 Contender

Fringe Contenders, 11 - 25, and beyond even.

today for example we've got 'potentially' 55 rated fighters Per Division with the 5 major Sanctioning Bodies, and of course Stronger Era's had as many, or more even Classed by trade papers. I.E. in the 1940s the Ring Classed approx. 200 men per division world wide.

World Classed by Leading Publications (Trade Paper(s)), for the sole purpose of Rating & Classifying fighters Rated & Ranked around the globe.

wins and/or loses to Champions, Top 10 Contenders and fringe contenders equally.

* Disclaimer

* NOT All Champs are the TRUE best man at the weight and obviously the same applies for Contenders.

Rating 'Precisely' 1-10 is near impossible to be perfectly accurate with 50 men around the world ALL capable of High Contention place and/or winning a title.

 

Somehow I knew that the person with the broadest definition of being "world class" would be Jim Glenn.

The problem with this loose definition, designed in order to include your grandpa, is that the idea that:

Rating 'Precisely' 1-10 is near impossible to be perfectly accurate with 50 men around the world ALL capable of High Contention place and/or winning a title.

would help Gilroy's status is a bit wrong when you consider that Gilroy was not a title threat, was never rated in the top ten, and lost to every fighter even approaching that status by KO. Hence: NOT WORLD CLASS.

 

when you consider that there are thousands of guys in every weight class, I think be a legitimate top 10 or 15 is enough to be considered world class. We often use "greatness" as the yard stick to measure athletes with, often forgetting that for every Jesse Ferguson there are a thousand other men who end up with records like 9-15-2.