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Boxers are ranked
(a) only in one weight division and
(b) only if they are "active".
Being "active" means:
(a) they have not
formally retired, and
(b) they have fought in the last 12 months.
The computer program gives active boxers points for each fight by rating:
- how convincingly the fight was
won
(i.e. KO or TKO, type of decision - unanimous, split, majority, or draw), and
- each fight's competitiveness,
based on both boxers' previous results.
Rating the Fights
All fights in the
WBAN fight database are considered, but only the previous two years' fights are used
for the head-to-head comparisons between ranked boxers (see below).
The program decides how many ranking
points should be at stake in any given fight after going through the
entire database to
"learn" which fights were the most competitive.
The program rates the fights as well as rating the fighters,
i.e., more ranking points are available for "big" competitive fights than for bouts between novices, or
for bad mismatches. So the score a boxer gets from a given fight depends on
whether she wins or loses it, and how, and on the quality of her opponent. In this system,
a boxer cannot get a high ranking
just by winning many fights against weak opponents. The only way to get a
high ranking is to win, draw (or lose narrowly) in "big fights"
as rated by the program --- and the only way for boxers near the top of the
rankings to move up is to take fights against high-ranked
opponents!
Note that this program can rank a boxer
with a losing record ahead of one with a winning record ... if it concludes that the
first boxer lost narrowly to quality opponents while the second boxer
piled up a winning record against easier competition. The program looks at quality of wins, not just
quantity.
Rating the Fighters
The program uses the principles that
the most recent fights and the most difficult fights count most in determining
the final rankings.
It works in two steps, for each weight
class.
- It first calculates a preliminary "career score"
for
every boxer in the weight class. The number of points awarded to a boxer for
any given fight is based entirely on how she won
or lost the fight (by KO or TKO, by unanimous, split or majority decision, or a draw) and by the strength of her opponents'
record prior
to that fight.
- It then looks at head-to-head
competition between the boxers in the
weight class. This step looks only at fights in which the rankable boxers competed against each other, and it re-adjusts their scores, giving
the most weight to
the most recent fights. Head-to-head fight results are allowed to
control the ranking order of the boxers for up to two years
following each fight. If a rematch changes a head-to-head result, then
the most recent result always controls the ranking.
Boxers who've retired are dropped only at
the end of the ranking process, so all fights involving retired boxers have been
considered even though those boxers are not listed themselves. Boxers with less
than a minimum number of wins are not ranked unless they have defeated a
higher-ranked boxer.
In March 2007 the minimum
score required in order to be ranked was increased from 125 to 250; this
"raising of the bar" reduced the number of ranked boxers to about
two-thirds of the previous rankings. In January 2008 the period of
inactivity allowed for ranking was reduced from 18 months to 12.
I have run this ranking program
since 2001 with only small adjustments since 2002. I've found that
boxers can eventually work their way into these rankings by consistently defeating enough lower-ranked
boxers, but the only way to climb high in these rankings is to
defeat, draw, or narrowly lose to higher-ranked boxers in head-to-head
competition with them.
If the top boxers in a weight classes
often compete head-to-head, then all of them will benefit by getting larger, and
better-determined, ranking scores in this system.
The Opponent Rating
As well as computing a ranking score for
each boxer, the program rates her "strength of schedule" by calculating her average "Opponent Rating" (higher
number for stronger opposition).
The final tables list an average opponent rating for all that boxer's
fights. This career average is not directly used in the final
rankings ... it's there just to help you see "at a glance" which boxers have
fought generally strong, or generally weak, schedules. The individual (fight-by-fight) opponent ratings are
however used when ranking the individual fights, and deciding how many points to
award for winning a given fight.
The "opponent rating" can
be high even for a boxer who has lost most of her fights (and therefore
gets a low ranking). It's a figure like the "degree of difficulty" rating for a dive in
competitive high-diving ... it measures how hard the boxer's fight
schedule was, and not how successful she was in it (in terms of winning fights).
You can use the opponent ratings to see
who's won-lost record has been discounted for fighting mainly weak opponents, or
who's been ranked despite having a poor won-lost record, because she had some
key wins, draws or close losses in a tough schedule.
The Ranking Lists
The WBAN ranking pages list
- The top 10 ranked boxers
in each weight class with their records, opponent ratings
and
final ranking scores.
- Detailed lists for all the ranked
boxers in each weight class, including a list
of recent fights for boxers in the weight class.
The ranking order is simply the order of
the final ranking scores. The "opponent ratings" for individual fights have
already been taken into account while rating the fights, and the overall average
opponent rating is not used again to determine the ranking order. Note that small differences in the
final ranking scores mean that
the ranking order is uncertain for those fighters.
A small
score (in the hundreds rather than thousands) also implies that a boxer's ranking could easily
be changed by a single "big fight".
© Dee Williams
Page last updated:
Friday, 04 April 2008 |
