BoxRec Puns

My interest in boxing got renewed in 2017 with the AJ-Wlad fight. Like many new fans, I found it daunting to figure out who was the best, and which belts to pay attention to, and how to balance all the criteria people judge fighters on.

As a baseball fan, I've always paid attention to advanced metrics. So I was naturally drawn to Boxrec as a new boxing fan. The more I learned about the sport, the more disenchanted I became with their rating system.

Currently, Jimmy McLarnin the second best fighter of all time, P4P. Holman Williams is seventh. Sammy Mandell is fifteenth. Among active fighters, they have Briedis, Wilder, Callum Smith, and Ugas in their top 10. I could go on - but I think you get the point.

I like what they're trying to do - but I think their rankings can often be nonsensical.

About a year or two ago, they changed their formula so that when a fighter loses, all his previous fights decrease in value. So, for instance, when AJ lost to Usyk - he's now, all of a sudden, not as good when he beat Wlad in 2017. I thought this decision was stupid. There is an ebb and flow to a fighter's career. It makes no sense to change how good someone is across time and space based on an individual result. A fighter is only as good as they last guy he beat. He can be great in one fight, and then washed three fights later. That happens.

So I set out to make my own rating system.

Mine isn't "perfect", by any means - but it seems to track better with other rankings I've seen. Here's my top 10 P4P list (compared to the average ranking between Boxrec, ESPN, TBRB, and The Ring):

1. Canelo Alvarez (1.00)
2. Terence Crawford (2.50)
3. Naoya Inoue (6.75)
4. Oleksandyr Usyk (3.25)
5. Roman Gonzalez (13.33)
6. Juan Francisco Estrada (8.75)
7. Vasyl Lomachenko (15.00)
8. Tyson Fury (6.25)
9. Josh Taylor (7.33)
10. Errol Spence Jr. (5.66)

Now, my rater doesn't strictly match how I'd personally rank them. I'd rank Usyk 2nd, for instance, and I think Chocolatito is a bit too high. But, overall, I think it does alright.

For anyone interested, my all time top 20 is:

1. Sugar Ray Robinson
2. Muhammad Ali
3. Floyd Mayweather Jr
4. Joe Louis
5. Roy Jones Jr
6. Julio Cesar Chavez
7. Henry Armstrong
8. Willie Pep
9. Archie Moore
10. Sugar Ray Leonard
11. Manny Pacquiao
12. Jose Napoles
13. Marvin Hagler
14. Carlos Monzon
15. Carlos Ortiz
16. Ezzard Charles
17. Sam Langford
18. Alexis Arguello
19. Evander Holyfield
20. Roberto Duran

My all time rankings are a bit

Last summer I was bored and collected info about first 172k boxers from all time p4p boxrecs list. Full list was about 500k but boxrec limited it to around 65k while I was collecting. Bellow I will provide some information I found interesting. Info collected is in format: "Ezzard Charles" "1974" "95 25 1" "light heavy" "1940-1959" "orthodox" "Cincinnati, USA". List was collected while Ezzerad Charles was number 1.

First thing I parsed was number of active fighters in each decade, this can be a little inaccurate since if some fighter skipped some decade I would count him as active in it, but this should be rare occasion and should not pose a problem. Bellow is list of active fighters per decade:

1930 37396,

1920 33748,

1940 25427,

2000 23221,

2010 21351,

1950 19819,

1990 19010,

1980 17790,

1910 14872,

1960 13971,

1970 13743,

1900 9481,

1890 3779,

2020 2201,

1880 642,

1870 43,

1860 5

This shows us that talent pool wasn't smaller 100 years ago. To me biggest surprise was seeing 70s so low on list. When we take into account only top 10k boxers, we get this, fairly similar list:

1930 2693,

1940 2497,

1950 2220,

1990 2012,

1920 2000,

2000 1963,

1980 1756,

1960 1570,

1970 1437,

2010 1164,

1910 750,

1900 310,

1890 94,

2020 65,

1880 11

Bellow is list for number of fighters per reported weight class (some didn’t have stated class):

heavy 8464,

cruiser 1867,

light heavy 8421,

super middle 2083,

middle 18274,

super welter 4833,

welter 27368,

super light 6024,

light 28505,

super feather 4210,

feather 22037,

super bantam 2914,

bantam 13070,

super fly 1618,

fly 7712,

light fly 5294,

minimum 4896

For most boxers there wasn’t available info if they were orthodox or southpaw, but here are results for those who do have info: 'orthodox': 22922, 'southpaw': 6268 And when only accounting top 10k: 'orthodox': 3508, 'southpaw': 1017, and top 1k: 'orthodox': 583, 'southpaw': 136. Percentage of southpaws is around 20% for all ranges, this is higher than general population but since a lot of boxers are missing stance type it could be biased.

Most boxers expectedly come from USA, here is top 10 countries:

USA 66398,

United Kingdom 23982,

Australia 14767,

Mexico 7500,

Japan 6753,

France 6347,

South Africa 4829,

Argentina 3414,

Philippines 3382,

Spain 2646

Here is top 10 cities:

Australia Sydney 4140,

USA Philadelphia 3543,

USA New Yo

Boxrec uses transparent metric for their ranking and is based on wins and losses. Other ranking are biased regarding a fighters relationship to Organizations or managements.

I was curious if anyone else had used the name in boxing before so I relied upon Boxrec to find out. Here's a list of those eighteen men and their records in chronological order.

1. Canelo Kid, Birth Name: Eduardo Rodriguez, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 08-12-1948, Pro Record: 47(33)-23(10)-2

2. Alfredo 'Canelo' Urbina, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 02-15-1957. Pro Record: 59(31)-21(3)-4

3. Babe Canelo, Birth Name: William Black, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 11-09-1957. Pro Record: 3(1)-3(2)-0

4. Canelo Salinas, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 01-13-1973, Pro Record: 2(1)-15(9)-1

5. Canelo Cruz, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 07-23-1975. Pro Record: 0-1(1)-0

6. Canelo Sanchez, Birth Name: Daniel Sanchez, Nationality: Nicaraguan, Pro Debut: 09-30-1976, Pro Record: 0-2(2)-0

7. Eduardo 'Canelo' Adame, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 10-08-1976, Pro Record: 1(1)-1(1)-0

8. Canelo Sanchez, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 12-07-1984, Pro Record: 0-1(1)-0

9. Cesar Canelo, Nationality: Dominican, Pro Debut: 10-25-1990, Pro Record: 0-8(7)-0

10. Fernando Canelo, Nationality: Dominican, Pro Debut: 11-29-1993, Pro Record: 0-2(2)-0

11. Carlos 'Canelo' Ochoa, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 04-07-2000, Pro Record: 1(0)-6(4)-1

12. Bernardo 'Canelo' Montes, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 04-14-2003, Pro Record: 0-4(3)-0

13. Roman 'Canelo' Mendez, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 07-03-2014, Pro Record: 0-25(25)-0

14. Jorge Luis 'Canelo' Cevalles, Nationality: Argentinian, Pro Debut: 11-11-2017, Pro Record: 5(3)-1(0)-0

15. William 'Canelo' Diaz, Nationality: Mexican, Pro Debut: 05-26-2018, Pro Record: 0-1(0)-0

16. Dyango Anglarill 'Canelo' Gomes, Nationality: Bolivian, Pro Debut: 12-20-2019, Pro Record: 0-1(1)-0

17. Mark 'Canelo' Uranov, Nationality: Russian

hint: it's more than 4.

Boxrec rates every fighter using a proprietary ELO rating system.

Basically, it's a mathematical formula designed to weigh each victory (or loss) based on the strength of the opposition, the type of win (stoppage compared to decision), experience, amount of ring rust (fighters are penalized for inactivity), and probably a whole host of other things that I'm not aware of (again, it's a proprietary formula).

There are a number of issues with their system. I think they get it mostly right (Tyson Fury is tops in the heavyweight division with 899 points, and the rest of their top 10 seems pretty reasonable), but there are always some odd ratings (especially with historical ratings).

On paper - it makes a lot of sense, but it's completely reliant on not having gaps in knowledge. Early historical records simply don't exist for a lot of fights, so we'll never know the complete records for most fighters. This gives someone like Mayweather an advantage in historical rankings over someone like Willie Pep, because while we may know all of Pep's opponents, we may not know everyone they fought, or everyone they fought. The ratings are all tethered together.

One thing I'd like to see implemented is to have the belts factored in somehow. Not all belts are equal, of course, but I don't think it's irrelevant that someone holds a belt (or multiples). Especially the lineal champ. It seems like a lineal champ should get a boost in their rating.

Something I don't like about the rating (and this is fairly new, as far as I can tell) is that previous ratings are all influenced by future events. So, for instance, when Ruiz beat AJ, all of Joshua's previous ratings were altered because he was now deemed to be not as good as previously thought.

That seems like bullshit to me. Sometimes, fighters are exposed after a loss, but you shouldn't automatically reevaluate an entire fighters career based off one fight.

Boxrec doesn't list fights they deem as "not meeting their standards", even if they're recognized by national comissions and biggest sanctioning bodies.

For example they didn't record fight for European title between Ewelina Pekalska and Lotta Loikkanen, because they don't accept the comission (Polish Professional Boxing Department). PPBD is accepted by all European comissions. For example, Mariusz Wach and Nikodem Jezewski fought on Joshua vs Pulev card on PPBD license. It's a farce that it's not recognized. Polish promoters are actually forced to use different comission recognized by Boxrec, but not accepted as an European Boxing Union member.

There are other cases of Boxrec blocking comissions. Here's the piece about fight for WBC regional title in UAE that is not listed as well http://boxingtalk.com/Op-Ed-Is-BoxRec-suppressing-legitimate-results-And-should-the-ABC-do-something-about-it-?fbclid=IwAR393tZtHGyxW9Q9WcFptJGgnxRufXyK-bryyUdbHu8UWRmNWB-UVYPwYTc

They also changed their ratings point system and it's completely incomprehensible. Years ago I was able to check importance of the fight by looking at how many points the fighters had at the moment. Now, it's some gibberish with fraction points and weird rules.

I'm sad that there's no alternative to Boxrec because I don't like policies of the owners.

Just stumbled upon it and am really impressed how extensive it is. How many of you guys use it?

And is it really that objective as far as the formula goes?

Meant to post Top 25 Heavyweights. Please note that the KO percentages are from the total number of fights not the KO percentages from wins. And according to this data Charles Martin is the most dangerous top 25 heavyweight that A.J. has faced. I always thought that fight was a fluke.

1. Lineal and WBC Heavyweight Champ Tyson Fury 67.74%
2. IBF,WBA,IBO,WBO Heavyweight Champ Anthony Joshua 88%
3. Deontay Wilder 93.18%
4. Dillian Whyte 63.33%.
5. Andy Ruiz Jr 61.11%
6. Oleksandr Usyk 72.22%
7. Alexander Povetkin 62.5%
8. Michael Hunter 61.9%
9. Joseph Parker 67.74%
10. Dereck Chirosa 53.49%
11. Luis Ortiz 75%
12. Joe Joyce 91.67%
13. Tony Yoka 80%
14. Kubrat Pulev 46.67%
15. Charles Martin 80.65%
16. Efe Ajagba 80%
17. Robert Helenius 57.58%
18. Adam Kownacki 71.43%
19. Hughie Fury 50%
20. Otto Wallin 58.33%
21. Martin Bakole 70.59%
22. Filip Hrgovic 83.33%
23. Daniel Dubois 87.5%
24. Murtat Gassiev 68.97%
25. Frank Sanchez 68.42%

I’m sure all of you have heard of Boxrec. That great archive of who fought who. I don’t understand their ranking system. Why do they have Kovalev as their champion at Light Heavy? The man hasn’t fought in a year, his last fight was a KO loss to a middleweight, and he isn’t even part of the current tournament to get a new WBO champion. So why is he rated so highly by Boxrec. There are a few more examples of this, but I feel like Kovalev is the most glaring one. How does Boxrec decide who their champion is, and why are so many of their champions not even title holders. Mairis Breidis, the aforementioned Kovalev, Danny Jacobs, Rey Vargas, and Kosei Tanaka are not champions. Only Breidis, Vargas, and Tanaka are rated no. 1 by ring in their respective divisions, while Kovalev is no. 3 at Light Heavy and Jacobs is no. 10! at super middleweight. What is the thought process or lack there of that goes into Boxrec’s ranking system.

Maybe these are questions I should ask on Boxrec itself, but I feel like Reddit probably has the answers.

This is something I’ve wanted to bring up for a while. On BoxRec, Juan Manuel Marquez is ranked as Lb for Lb, the best Mexican boxer of all time, and the best Featherweight of all time. Does anyone agree with Marquez’s status? Why or why not?

For example, they can find Pacquaio's amateur career but they can find Kid Chocolates amateur career who boxed at a similar level (National Level).

Boxrec has records that go back decades. But there's no free kickboxing website that is just as in-depth as boxrec

So as I did my usual cruising around and got to Saul Farah (71-25-3 62 KO). I end up on his record a lot because he fights really bad opposition for a guy that has over 100 fights. So I start looking at who he's fought (and its awful). I get back to 2016 and am pretty surprised that he beat 12-1-2 Salvatierra. It isn't like Farah to fight anyone with more than 0 wins and 10 overall fights, unless he is the B side (which he is alot).

I click on Salvatierra and scroll through his record. He lost to Farah twice before losing to 12-0 Armando Alvarez two times in a row. So I click on Alvarez to see what his deal is. I noticed he lost to...Jaron Ennis...who is a welterweight.

So I go back to the record of 5'10" Salvatierra and notice that he started his career and fought as a heavyweight from 2015-2016. He then dropped down to cruiserweight near the end of 2016. The crazy thing is he was at 207 in August 2016 and fought at 173 less than two months later!

Two months after that he was down to 162 and then down to 151 two months after that. He hit welterweight a month after hitting 151 pounds. He kept moving down and was at 140 two months after his welterweight debut. Finally one year after his 207 pound heavyweight fight he was at 150.

In a span of 12 months Salvatierra went from 207 down to 140! That's a 67 pound weight difference. He bounced back up to 150 but wasn't done moving down. He went back to 140 after weighing 150 before hitting his career low of 137 pounds for a fight in 2017. From there he fought at 147, 140, 138, and 157.

To make this story even more insane he turned pro at 40 YEARS OLD! That means he made lost mass amounts of weight from ages 41-43. His career spanned 3 years from ages 40-43 and he fought in six weight classes ranging from heavyweight (unlimited) to super lightweight (140 pound limit).

This recordis truly one of the most bizarre I have seen as of late.

Just to spur a bit of activity in the sub I looked to see how the card was shaping up for the tail end of this month and right now it is a follows:

Isaac Vallie Flagg (3-0) vs. Luis Palamino (1-0)
Will Chope (Debut) vs. Joseph Elmore (Debut)

Kaleb Harris (2-2) vs. Elvin Brito (1-2)

Frank Tate (Debut) vs. Dillon Cleckler (Debut)

Bobby Taylor (Debut) vs. Louis Hernandez (Debut)

Tee Cummins vs. John McAllister (0-2)

Chris Sarro (1-0) vs. Billy Martin (0-1)

*They still have it on the website as Alers, but Boxrec has Vallie Flagg. Injury maybe? or perhaps a mistype? Is this card exciting to you? Would you get it anyway? What do you guys think so far?

In Deontay Wilder's list of bouts there is an asterisk after the name Dustin Nichols and I can't figure out why. (Is it because it's a frigging joke that he was fighting a guy like this at the stage when Fury was winning the european heavyweight title?)

This BoxRec cruising links back to my original BoxRec cruising post of Eddy Salvatierra, the incredible shrinking man. He fought Farah twice and at 11-0-1 and 12-1 he was one of the better records Farah faced since 2016. To put it in context Farah was 56-19-3 in the first fight and 57-20-3 in the second fight.

Farah had 78 career fights while Salvatierra had 12. The 66 fight difference isn't even close to the widest margin that Farah has had in his career. If you remove the fights that he takes to lose and get paid, which are many, his record is crazy.

In fight number 98 for Farah he fought 0-6-1 Cesar Mamani in 2019. This was actually the fourth time that he fought Mamani. He was 68-23-3 when he fought 0-5-1 Mamani also in 2019, was 66-23-3 when he fought 0-3-1 Mamani also in 2018 , and was 64-22-3 when he faced 0-1 Mamani in 2017.

The fight fight was the 90th fight for Farah and the second for Mamani. Just a casual 88 fight difference between them. This is the largest fight difference on his record. The third fight between 66-23-3 Farah and 0-3-1 Mamani was for the Bolivian Heavyweight Title.

His record is littered with absurd mismatches like this. The last 10 men he beat came in a COMBINED 13-41-3. He fought 5 fighters with 0 wins, two fighters with 1 win, two fighters with 2 wins, and one fighter that was a tough 7-4. Farah had no less than 73 fights in any of those wins.

His best wins have come against fellow mismatch fighter Esteban Hillman Tababary. Farah beat him three times in a four fight in 2015 and 2016. Tababary was 23-13-2, 25-14-2, and 25-15-2, in those three fights. As far as Farah wins go Tababary is the most accomplished fighter he has ever beaten.

The Mismatch King has held the interim World Boxing Council Latino Heavy Title, WBC interim South American Heavyweight Title, Beni State Heavyweight Title, Santa Ana del Yacuma City Heavyweight Title, Bolivian Heavyweight Title, Santa Cruz de la Sierra State Heavyweight Title, and Bolivian Cruiserweight Title.

He made 12 defenses of the Bolivian Heavyweight Title over multiple spans. Farah won the title against a winless fighter when he was 25-10-1. Outside of defenses against 14-5-1 Juan Carlos Flores Choque and 25-14-2 Tababary he only made one defense against a fighter with more than two wins.

There is so much to digest on his record I sugge

Everyone knows how the maths behind can come out flawed but having Roman 'Chocolatito' Gonzalez ranked as the 222th best super fly in the world is ridiculous, 9th best from Nicaragua especially comparing that to the man he just reclaimed a world title against in Kal Yafai being ranked 4th in the world.

EDIT: I may have found something even worse, generally accepted top 5 and for some top 1/2 p4p Terence Crawford is ranked 53rd best welterweight in the world 2 spots behind domestic figther Luther Clay. And adding on to the super fly example we also have another top 10 p4p star Juan Francisco Estrada at 147th in the world.

I love exploring the records of fighters and recognizing someone I lost track of and finding out how their career progressed. It's also great for discovering little known fighters before they get their first break or traveling down rankings to realize the talent gaps which occur after a certain ranking.

Just wondering if anyone is willing to share a recent Boxrec journey with the sub?

Just 5 boxers feature on the Boxrec top 50 P4P list who are 25 or under.

They are;

1. Luis Nery
2. Isaac Dogboe
3. Naoya Inoue
4. Cristofer Rosales
5. Gervonta Davis

Who of these do you think will achieve the most?

Who would you add to the list?

You can find them here.

Really cool. Gives you a great insight into who mattered when as you flick though them. Some of my favourites:

Joe Louis, 1940

Joe Frazier

Foreman v Ali

Classic Tommy Hearns

Hagler War

Tyson 93

Tito 01

Manny 07

B-Hop

Also like these two of Tyson:

Winter 95

Winter 97

Just been updated, Canelo dethroned !http://boxrec.com/en/ratings

The Sunday Puncher podcast issued a challenge and I'd like put forth a nomination:

Japanese middleweight born Koki Maebara goes by the alias "Muhamad Tyson Koki"

http://boxrec.com/boxer/609795

Recently I was curious about the United States and Mexico border battle as it pertains to boxing. I wanted to answer the question of: if the best boxers from each country represented their respective weight class at this moment in time, which country would win the most matches? In addition, which country holds the best boxers from a lb for lb perspective (as it pertains to these matches)?

My methodology for answering this question came down to taking the boxer with the highest amount of points on BoxRec from each of the 17 weight classes and making the assumption that the boxer with the most amount of points would win. While this is admittedly an oversimplification, the results I got were interesting so I figured I'd post about them. The first boxer in these listed matches is considered the "winner" and the number of points they have on BoxRec listed next to their name. At the end I will give a TLDR stating which country had the most wins and which country had the highest amount of total points from all of their fighters in each match.

Minimumweight: Carlos Licona (USA-37) vs German Valenzuela (MEX-18)

Light Flyweight: Jose Argumedo (MEX-101) vs Jesse Rodriguez (USA-21)

Flyweight: Ganigan Lopez (MEX-151) vs Brian Viloria (USA-107)

Super Flyweight: Pedro Guevara (MEX-168) vs Dewayne Beamon (USA-61)

Bantamweight: Luis Nery (MEX-818) vs Rau’shee Warren (USA-163)

Super Bantamweight: Emanuel Navarrete (MEX-419) vs Daniel Roman (USA-259)

Featherweight: Leo Santa Cruz (MEX-690) vs Gary Russell Jr (USA-461)

Super Featherweight: Miguel Berchelt (MEX-740) vs Gervonta Davis (USA-385)

Lightweight: Mikey Garcia (USA-607) vs Raymundo Beltran (MEX-126)

Super Lightweight: Regis Prograis (USA-363) vs Antonio DeMarco (MEX-93)

Welterweight: Terence Crawford (USA-1,067) vs Adrian Granados (MEX-140)

Super Welterweight: Jarett Hurd (USA-337) vs Jaime Munguia (MEX-323)

Middleweight: Saul Alvarez (MEX-1,089) vs Jermall Charlo (USA-390)

Super Middleweight: Gilberto Ramirez (MEX-355) vs Jesse Hart (USA-210)

Light Heavyweight: Joe Smith Jr (USA-234) vs Humberto Velazco Torres (MEX-68)

Cruiserweight: Andrew Tabiti (USA-161) vs Gabriel Adrian Garcia (MEX-19)

Heavyweight: Deontay Wilder (USA-319) vs Julian Fernandez (MEX-15)

In total, Mexico wins by a single match (MEX-9 to USA-8). As it pertains to the total amount of points, Mexico wins again by an extremely close margin (MEX: 5,33