To add some meat to the argument that past eras had more fighters, i found this.

(Mike Silver is a well respected historian whos written the book "the arc of boxing". While i haven't read the book and therefore cannot provide sources, I'm sure hes not flat out lying about the numbers)

""In 1927, there were 2,000 licensed professional boxers residing in the state of New York and over 900 boxing shows were promoted throughout the state. In 2006, the state licensed 50 pro boxers and staged just 38 shows.

During the 1920s and 1930s, approximately 8,000 – 10,000 professional boxers were licensed annually in the United States, while in 2006 that figure had dropped to 2,850.""


Also;

"In 1925, a fighter had an average of 84 fights and fought 644 rounds before winning a title. In 1955, a fighter had an average of 70 fights and fought 417 rounds before winning a title. By 2007, the number dropped to 27 fights and 143 rounds."

While we're pseudo on the subject, has SE ever had a Boxing draft where were take 5-6 boxers (1 HW, 1 LHW/CW, 1 MW, 1 WW, 1 FW or something) and then compared stables? Could have some pretty cool results if we kept the numbers low enough that we saw it through to the end.

Would the idea be playing the role of the promoter? i.e. maximising talent and marketability? I think that would be fun, rather than just picking the best fighters.

No clue, just floating the idea.

Ideally we'd have around 8-16 stables of guys that would then match up in a tourney or something. Match up each weight class and debate the 5 fights. Odds are it never gets that far, but there's enough interest in this thread to have a shot at being pretty cool.

i liked the mma draft that was made in the edf forum. People got to pick matchups rather than single fighters, and put together a "dream card".

Obviously pac vs floyd would instawin so maybe just ban that option.

if you had to guess the VIG free vegas line of PBF - Mayweather (you win $1,000,000 if you get it +/- 10!) what would you guess it comes out at?

my thought is PBF -110 / Manny +110?

floyd -150

Opening line will probably be closer than that.
I'd imagine the opening line will be very close to the last one, which was what? -135? Don't remember.

I like the "pick your stable" option, then let the teams duke it out, so to speak.

If we do it, I'm in.

If we get enough interest from ITT we can try it I suppose, no idea what the protocol is for starting draft threads though (can't recall if there's an approval or anything).

Which is better in everyone's opinion, more owners/smaller teams, or fewer owners, larger teams?

This sounds awesome.

So given this scenario we would do our own team vs another drafters? Not inhouse fights?

And the goal is to beat others in teamgames?

Either way I'm in. I'll jump at any chance to discuss boxing.

Yep, that's what I was getting at.

I think it could work and I think it'd be fun.

No opinion on this. But I'd hate for this to get stalled and forgotten after a while because of inactive people etc.

So the drafters imo need to be able to stay somewhat active.


Another Question. Should we do currently active fighters only, or is it cool to pick any fighter in history?
I think the latter would make it more interesting since otherwise It's easy to just pick the dominant forces in every division.

No one will argue that Donaire will beat Agbeko, but Monzon vs Hagler?

To give anyone interested a better idea, I'm thinking something like this:

1 HW (200 lbs.+)
1 LHW/Crusier (175-199lbs.)
1 MW/SuperMW (160-168lbs.)
1 LWW/WW/LMW (140-154lbs)
1 BW-LW (118lbs-135lbs)

Those groupings seem close enough that we can compare fighters across their respective divisions when the need arises.

16 teams, 5 guys OR 8 teams, 10 guys (2 from each class)

Picks go ABBABAABBAABBA (1st overall pick is last in rounds 2 and 3, then regular snake)

At the end of the picks, we make a random bracket and match up each stable, we can all vote, best of 5 moves on.

Seem like a decent starting point?

I tend to agree. 8 teams picking 10 fighters>>16 teams picking 5, but it's close imo since there aren't going to be a ton of rounds.

yup

All time LDO

fyp

may i suggest we pick the 8 original weightclasses?

That way we cover pretty much every fighter in history. Obviously you would be able to draft anyone who could realistically make the weight. (most guys at 168 would be drafted into LHW etc)

How do you want to weigh prime/peak vs. career longevity?

I don't have any problem with this. I just went with the 5 sets I mentioned above to keep picks down and avoid making people pick 110 lbs fighters they've never heard of.

As i understand this will not be about legacy or "greatness". Rather head 2 head matchups. And that way it all comes down to skill, ability and how you can exploit the strengths and weaknesses of the other fighter (basically stylistical matchup)

It seems like we could go either:

1) You pick the boxer at a given age and we attribute to him everything he'd done up to that point

or

2) You get his body of work accounting for age (i.e. the KOs a boxer that's hung around too long suffered at the end of his career don't weight as heavily as his "prime-work").

I think I prefer 2 as it's just easier to conceptualize. Telling someone to rank Tyson only up to Spinks is harder than just saying "rank Tyson" (even though that in itself isn't all that easy).

Yeah, it's this basically, but BF's question is valid, see above.

Yeah, the lowest we would go would be flyweight (using the original classes).

If anyone is uncertain about a weight, well thats what youtube is for.
Just google "best flyweights of all time" and start going through the youtube archives to find your favorite fighter.

(youtube should be included as much as possible in my opinion. In part to let readers get a glimpse about, for them, undiscovered fighters but also to showcase attributes and certain skillsets. And basically, to make it more fun)

The easiest would probably be to just assume the fighter is as prime as possible for when he fought at the weight. A floyd at featherweight is greatly different from a floyd at welterweight.

It will be hard to ignore the flaws we know tyson have, just by requesting us to forget everything past spinks.

We'll just have to try to be fair about this.

I assume you mean these right KoC?

Heavyweight [176 lbs plus; at least 75.3 kg; over 12 stone, 7 lbs]
Cruiserweight [175 lb maximum; 79.5 kg; or 12 stone, 7 pounds]
Middleweight [160 lbs maximum; 72.7 kg; or 11 stone, 4 pounds]
Welterweight [147 lbs maximum; 66.8 kg; or 10 stone, 7 pounds]
Lightweight [135lbs maximum; 61.4 kg; or 9 stone, 9 pounds]
Featherweight [126lbs maximum; 57.3 kg; or 9 stone]
Bantamweight [118lbs maximum; 53.6 kg; or 8 stone, 6 pounds]
Flyweight [112lbs maximum; 50.9 kg; or 8 stone]

The only issue that jumps out at me is the HW at 176+ seems to remove a lot of good fighters that would otherwise compete if it were 156-199. It's going to be hard to make a case for a great 180lb fighter against a traditional 235 lb HW.

Yeah, the fighters fight at "prime" for their weight imo, the only consideration is what to take into account. I'm thinking the entire body of work is the best bet.

Yep except for cruiserweight being changed into "light heavyweight" but thats semantics.

It's probably hard to imagine a guy like dempsey being able to handle the mammoth heavies of later eras, but i don't know where to draw the line?
An option could be to up it to the current 200lbs limit, but I'll leave that up to you guys to decide.