The Value Of A Win

When considering the legacy of a fighter how do we determine how much each singular win means?

If we look at the top men of recent years in Mayweather, Pacquiao, Hopkins and Jones, what factors make a good win a great win. There are many factors to consider; form, age, weight, style, ranking and manner of victory. Whenever talking about a great fighter there is almost always an excuse made for a victory but is this being overly critical or is needed in seperating fighters who on face value are very even.

If we look at Mayweathers most recent three fights in Marquez, Mosley and Ortiz we can see how each factor affects our perception of the fights. If we break each fight down in an overly critical way it would seem that each factor is as important as the next, Marquez was the lineal lightweight champion, had given the pound for pound number one fits twice and was widely considered to be the next best fighter on the planet. He signs to fight Mayweather and most of this gets forgotten and he becomes a blown up featherweight tailor made for the bigger Mayweather, should the fact he was unproven at Welterweight detract from the win or do wins need to be rated on a divisional basis rather than a pound for pound one? You then have Mosley a world class Welterweight who had produced one of his career best performances in beating Margarito but an absence of 17 months of the ring left many calling him an old past it fighter but does the second round of that fight provide enough evidence to suggest he was still a live opponent? Then Ortiz a young up and comer who had just beaten Berto in the fight of the year, had previously had his heart and desire questioned with many of these fears being questioned by the Berto fight. He was a huge Welterweight coming of a career high win but was young and relatively unproven at the highest level.

Then we have Pacquiao who's career highs have been Morales, Barrera, Marquez, Cotto and Hatton, all sorts of excuses have been made to try and degrade these wins but is they any difference between beating say Morales and Robinson beating Armstrong? Would a win over a lesser name mean more if they were younger, considering Mayweather and Ortiz you would have to say no.

Then we have two fighters who enjoyed long reigns at Middleweight and Light Heavyweight respectively, at each weight Hopkins and Jones have few eye catching wins but they beat almost every top ranked fighter in their divisions, do a collection of good rather than greats wins mean more than a couple of great ones? The way in which Ray Leonard is ranked would suggest that at the highest level great wins are almost exclusively all that matters but does this detract from longevity where the overall standard didn't allow for a Hagler, Hearns or Duran win?

Do we judge wins divisionally or pound for pound?
How much emphasise do we base on form?
Does it mean less beating a fighter stylistically made for you?
When considering style how much emphasise should we base on two fighters different manner of victory over the same opponent?

I think we look at wins as a portion of the circle.....We have longevity and skill as the other portions to make it complete.....

Think it's safe to say you can find fault in any win.....Hoppo was green..Paccy cleaning up Floyd's leftovers etc...

However to beat fighters at their best or close to their best and dominate for any stretch of time means you have a top class fighter...

that's not to say certain spin doesn't upset you......Like the pathetically over dramatic Aussie wallies that basically proclaimed Green great for beating a half dead Jones...

Think it's hard to pull the cover over any fan's eyes that's not a sycophant.. (Bunce, D4.. spring to mind)..

Think we all know building up half dead fighters and using catchweights is BS....

Value of a win is whatever it means to the observer....usually determined by his level of brightness..

Truss if we look at the tail end of Tysons career, he lost to Lewis, Williams and McBride but only Lewis gets any credit for it, does beating a past it great only mean something if you too are a great fighter?

Imperial Ghosty wrote:Truss if we look at the tail end of Tysons career, he lost to Lewis, Williams and McBride but only Lewis gets any credit for it, does beating a past it great only mean something if you too are a great fighter?

Depends if he's still game - In Tyson-Lewis game - no. In Tyson Holmes I would say yes. I don't care for Tyson and don't rank him as highly as others but despite Holmes excellent Jab - he got hit alot, especially against Cooney - a quarter of the opportunities given to Tyson rather than Cooney = easy KO for Tyson. Subjective of course but it is what I think. Tyson didn't just land one he landed 3-4. I give a little credence to his win over holmes but not so much for Lewis over Tyson - although I feel Lewis may have beaten him even in his prime. There just too many variables to consider to give a definitive answer and people are usually left with their gut instinct.

Excellent article and it is food for thought, I suppose overall it's what you make of the particular circumstances in each case and that ends up determining where you end up ranking them overall. However, this can lead to certain guys like D4 who only see one side on a certain fighter in the likes of Manny.

Nowadays any good win is always brought down and rather than celebrating how great a certain fight is we always seem to get straight down to the business end, who's a realistic next target, what were the external factors of someone losing a fight.

It's strange how we rank fighters, at times we almost take away the win from a fighter with some factors, however we rarely allow the other fighter certain excuses for losing. I think overall we are far too harsh especially on modern day fighters. (Mainly the ones that you have mentioned)

For me if a fighter is still live but not necessarily in there prime or in there correct weight class, part of it depends on the manner of the victory and the particular external factors surrounding it.

Certain guys get a break from this like Pryors win over Arguello, of course a great win, but rarely talked about is it that Arguello wasn't in his best weight class, whereas every single win that Mayweather or Pac have is scrutinised and torn to pieces so that the win is next to pointless.

I would go with Pacqiaou beating Clottey a top ten ranked WW who had just given Cotto one of the toughest rides of his life and lost a narrow, controversial split decision, if this had happened in the 50's or something and Pac had come all the way from Flyweight to completely shut out Clottey I think it would be heralded as a great win, whereas now, it is ripped apart to be completely nothing.

It's very difficult and utterly subjective marking these guys and it's just so impossible to get everyone to agree with such things, but I put it like this, the fact that it is so subjective and so open to debate, is just another thing that makes our sport so great.

Not sure I quite agree with Clottey being considered a great win in an other era, he's a solid fighter but not much more, seem him very much like a Ralph Zanelli, capable of giving fighters a tough fight but would more often than not fall short.

I was thinking of Arguello and his four peak losses to Marcel, Fernandez and Pryor with Pryor the one getting the most credit despite it coming in the weakest of the four divisions he fought in. The Fernandez fight was seen as a blip while against Marcel he was young and not at his best weight but removing the controversy Pryor beat him giving his best losing effort, not sure many stand up to that uppercut.

I disagree re: Clottey, I personally feel that in an earlier era, that a man moving all the way from Flyweight all the way up to WW and completely shutting out a top ten WW would be regarded as a very good win, whereas now it's nothing of significance.

I agree with the Pryor one over Arguello, they don't add up, generally a few of them type of things are viewed as oversights.

If we see Clottey as being a very good win then how do we rank Robinson less glamourous wins at Welterweight? You have his shut out win of the number three ranked Jackie Wilson who was in red hot form going into the fight aside from an ill advised fight at middleweight against LaMotta but it's never spoken about. Were Clottey his first fight at the weight it would be rated higher but we have the Cotto fight before it. You have Jimmy Mclarnin a fighter who started out at Bantamweight eventually moving up to Welterweight to beat Ross, Leonard, Corbett, Canzoneri and Ambers, all very good or great wins but not sure how much bearing him coming from lower weights had on that.

No doubt they would all be regarded higher, so I guess a decent question is should most wins be regarded higher than we regard them now or not? Also to be fair he beat Cotto before that yes, but there's a decent arguement to say Clottey beat him or at least ran him extremely close, so a definite legitimate opponent in my eyes.

A legitimate opponent yes but not sure he's of a high enough standard to ever been considered anything more than a good win. I think first and foremost quality of opposition is the most important and then the other factors impact on how much it means. If we take Morales to be a 10/10 opponent how much do other factors detract from that, when Manny beat him i'd say he was a 8/10 but Cotto would be a 9/10.

I would regard Clottey as a 7/10 win, but considering the size difference etc all weighing in at Clotteys favour I would regard it as an 8/10 win going by your way of scoring. Good way of scoring wins though.

I could never envisage a Clottey win being 8/10, think he's a 7/10 fighter who only had size on his side, if you're talking about evenly matched fighters and ones bigger then it could increase the win. Hatton I would say was an 8/10 but the manner of victory against a bigger opponent could push it up and he was considered a challenge.

For me an average win over Clottey is 7/10, completely shutting him out being a MUCH smaller guy and Clottey being a huge WW anyway is good enough to push up the win by a point to an 8/10 win for me personally.

Can't really agree with that, he's just not good enough to be considered a very good win.

form is an interesting pint. for me, most boxers when on the slide are done. however, much like a musician who releases an album of brilliance long after expectation, a boxer can give one last great performance.

still, traditionally form is usually dictated from that first loss. countless examples on record.

Top article, Ghosty.

I think the truth, as it often does, lies somewhere between the two, but I'd say that it's fairer to lean towards a 'pound for pound perspective' rather than judging solely on what weight a fighter beats another fighter at. Seems the trend these days to bash any win which comes against a fighter who was moving up, which is ridiculous.

Nope, if a figher is in genuinely good form going in to the bout or is seen as an ostensibly dangerous opponent, then the victor deserves credit and their win recognition. If that wasn't the case, we'd be here putting an asterisk next to a hell of a lot of wins over the course of history, for (ramdom) example Whitaker's superb win over Nelson and the like - which really shouldn't be the case. As long as it's a reasonable jump in weight (which Lightweight to Welterweight certainly is) then there's no complaints from me.

What are your feelings on the Marquez win for Mayweather then Chris?

I personally when scrutinising a fighters record do go down the divisional route more than pound for pound, Leonard being the prime example, ignoring everything and just considering just the result his top two wins would have to be Hearns and Hagler rather than Duran. Duran is easily the highest ranked of the three pound for pound but beating a great middleweight at middleweight and a great welterweight at welterweight has to mean more than beating a great lightweight at welterweight. Could argue that there's enough to suggest Duran was a great welterweight too and his wins over Palomino and Leonard would certainly suggest that but he looked more destructive and at home down at lightweight.

Think i've got an idea, will take the ten best wins of the twenty greatest fighters of all time, rate them out of ten and see who comes top, got a feeling Robinson wouldn't be top.

Well as I said Ghosty, I think a mixture of the two theories is needed to give an accurate reflection, but I'd lean more towards a pound for pound sense than a divisional one. No doubting that natural size was in Mayweather's corner against Marquez, but the quality of his performance in that fight was sublime. I don't believe for a single second that any other Welterweight would have done exactly the same against that version of Marquez, for instance, despite the fact that some of Mayweather's harsher critics would tell us that.

Touching on your last comment, for example, would Mayweather shutting out Berto in 2009 have impressed you more than shutting out Marquez did, purely on the basis that Berto is a natural Welterweight? I'd take the Marquez win any day of the week, but that's just me.

Of course a victory over Marquez Chris but you're then left comparing two very different levels of opponent which I suppose is the point you mean about a mixture. A win over a great smaller fighter means more than one over a good bigger fighter but a win over a great bigger guy means more than one over a great smaller guy.

So in essence if I understand rightly that in the case of Leonard you would have Hearns above Duran but Duran above Benitez?

Imperial Ghosty wrote:So in essence if I understand rightly that in the case of Leonard you would have Hearns above Duran but Duran above Benitez?

Yeah, wouldn't argue too much with that. Think it's wafer-thin between the New Orleans Duran win and the Hearns one due to the respective circumstances of both fights, but wouldn't argue with anyone putting Hearns top, and as you say I'd have the Benitez win beneath both of them.

Never really thought about it before but there is a case to say that Duran was more proven at Welterweight than Hearns which on the face of things seems absurd but Palomino and Leonard stacks up very favourably to Cuevas but as you say the manner of victory makes it a close run thing.

Chris, the catchweight discussion has made me think of Armstrong who was beating a string of great fighters in defence of his Welterweight title, does the fact many of these were against lightweights such as Arizmendi, Montanez, Feldman and Jenkins detract from that or is it a unique case where you have to view things solely on a pound for pound basis?