10 Most Accomplished of My Lifetime

[marbleheadmaui]

1. There is ZERO logic behind number one. Absolutely none. Correlation does NOT equal causation. And hey, if you're going to concede the Ring rankings are reasonable? Then they are also sufficient to identify contenders. The belts are at best superfluous. At worst? they cause huge problems. Why? Because, among other things they lead to alphabet rankings. last tiem I counted up the top ten 147's for the four largest gangs? We have 22 top ten ranked 147's. Yay us!
2. TV pays more for title fights because fans are being stupid. THAT is the key problem. If you want to tie some things together? How about the decline in boxing and the rise in the alphabet gangs? They coincide to a remarkable degree.
3. Again, you are simply clueless about boxing history. Pre the TV days fighters fought, period. You could see a live card in NYC 350 nights a year. It wasn't until TV arose in the 1950's and those clubs died that that dynamic changed. A pretty good metaphor for the rise and decline of the sport is Stillman's Gym. Read about it sometime. Or hell read a bio of Archie Moore or Harry Greb or Sam Langford etc. Of course the better way to look at things is which would you rather have? Some fighters having other jobs? or what we have today, a sport with HALF as many fighters as we had 50 years ago. In other words HALF of the guys we'd hope were fighters today too full time jobs doing something else and not fighting at all! Does that seem better to you?

1. When did I say you need belts to rank fighters? What independant ratings do you want to use other than the Ring's? It is a FACT that virtually every current alphabet holder is top 10 rated by the Ring. So tell me this - were the bogus "world" champions you listed rated top 10 before they won their belts? I don't think so. Therefore the belt is promoting them even in independant rankings. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but that's just the way she goes.

2 & 3. I was talking from the benefit of a fighters perspective not a fans. I may well be clueless. But one thing I know, fighters from the past like fighters from the present all fight for one thing - money!!! That has never changed.

And I don't think boxing is in such a bad state. Seems to me boxing rolls along turning out great fight after great fight every week. Whether they be from America, Britain, South America, Europe, Japan etc, there are always boxing bills happening. I never lived in the "good old days" so sadly don't know what i'm missing

And heaven forbid you do thew work to learn what you missed

Seriously there dramatically fewer cards worldwide than there were two decades ago. I did some rudimentary statistical work on that topic a year or so ago and the number of cards was down 30% or more in that time. The two exceptions were the former Eastern Europe (Poland, Germany) where it was illegal two decades ago and Argentina (where the sport does just roll along). Everywhere else was down and down dramtically.

On the money issue I understand that today belts mean more and that fighters are money driven. My point (which I haven't made clearly) is that that money isn't free. It comes at the expense of something, in this case the breadth of the sport. The way money has changed in the sport for the worse is in concentration. The guys at the top make huge somes. But the overall money available supports half as many fighters as it used to.

Why not hold terminology constant over time? Call strapholders what they would have been called in the days of one world champ per division. Contenders. It's an honorable title isn't it?

[generalbulldog]

That's very interesting that Donaire has a claim on the 118 lineal title. But really I do think the winner of Agbeko-Mares vs Donaire should really be for it.

It's also very interesting that Ring has Moreno as the no. 2 bw in the world. I don't know about that. Other rankings have Agbeko as the no. 2. The thing with establishing a new lineal champ is that it's sometimes hard to determine who is the no. 1 or 2 guy to fight it out to determine a new champ. But at 118 it's generally considered that Donaire is no. 1, but the no. 2 guy is hard to determine.