If Boxing rankings followed UFC guidelines

Real life boxing
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Didn’t mean to hit post on the last one, which is why there’s 2 and one’s deleted.

1 belt per division, no promoters, top 15 are ranked and you have to A) beat a ranked guy or B) be dominant against unranked guys to join the rankings. There’s also an interim belt brought into a weight class if the champion hasn’t fought in a while due to injury (in this case, I’ll name an interim champion for any weight class whose champ hasn’t fight in the past year, and the interim champ will have fought in the last 6 months). Losses to highly ranked guys also don’t kill your stock as a fighter like in boxing. How does the boxing world look if this were the case? Here’s what I think the rankings would look like right now. I’ve noticed a lot of real-life ranked guys are not eligible to be ranked using this formula, as they haven’t fought top guys. Crazy how different this makes boxing look. I’m only going to do a few weight classes but you’ll get the idea.

Heavyweight

CHAMP: Tyson Fury
Interim Champ: None (Fury has fought within the last year)
1: Oleksandr Usyk
2: Anthony Joshua
3: Zhilei Zhang
4: Deontay Wilder
5: Andy Ruiz Jr
6: Joe Joyce
7: Dillian Whyte
8: Filip Hrgovic
9: Luis Ortiz
10: Joseph Parker
11: Jarrell Miller (no ranked wins but on a big win streak)
12: Jermaine Franklin (no ranked wins but close losses to 2 ranked opponents)
13: Frank Sanchez (no ranked wins but dominant unbeaten streak)
14: Derek Chisora
15: Jared Anderson (no ranked wins but dominant)

Light Heavyweight

CHAMP: Dmitri Bivol
Interim Champ: None
1: Artur Beterbiev
2: Gilberto Ramirez
3: Joe Smith Jr
4: Oleksandr Gvozdyk
5: Joshua Buatsi
6: Anthony Yarde
7: Callum Smith (no ranked wins at 175 but a former top ranked 168)
8: Michael Eifert
9: Lyndon Arthur
10: Jean Pascal
11: Craig Richards
12: Dan Azeez (no ranked wins but very good of late)
13: Mathieu Bauderlique
14: Richard Rivera (no ranked wins but dominant stretch since last loss)
15: Ricards Bolotniks

Super Middlewight

CHAMP: Saul Alvarez
Interim Champ: None
1: John Ryder
2: David Benavidez
3: Caleb Plant
4: Zach Parker
5: Lerrone Richards
6: Christian Mbilli
7: Jose Uzcategui
8: Carlos Gongora
9: Daniel Jacobs
10: Ali Akhmedov
11: Demetrius Andrade (no ranked wins but 32 wins)
12: Bektemir Melikuziev
13: Anthony Dirrell
14: Edgar Berlanga (no ranked wins but impressive unbeaten streak)
15: David Morrell (no ranked wins but a fan favorite and dominant unbeaten streak)

Get the gist? While it’s harder for young/inexperienced guys to get ranked, and there would be a logjam of veterans at the top, it would push some of the guys who are too scared to fight tough opponents in favor of keeping their zeros to fight up the rankings to actually earn a title shot. I think heavyweight is the best portrayal of this. Daniel Dubois has been in the headlines recently as a potential opponent for Usyk as a mandatory. He doesn’t even make the top 15 in this scenario, as he hasn’t fought any top guys nor has he been dominant in his last few fights. Not saying either is 100% the right way to do things, but I definitely think the MMA organizations have it better right now than boxing, especially for matchmaking purposes.

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It’s an interesting thought for sure. I’m not totally against more than one champion. As undisputed fights are obviously huge and very exciting. I think the issue is with there being 4 federations. Up until the 80s there was just WBC and WBA. That is probably a better scenario.

Unfortunately for MMA I think the more likely scenario is that MMA goes the same way as boxing. If someone really decided to pump huge money into a rival to UFC I wonder what would happen.

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I agree that is probably more likely, but I don’t think either will happen, even if a serious contender to the UFC arises. MMA organizations, for the most part, treat themselves as leagues like the NBA or the NFL. They are all well aware that there are other leagues, better or worse, than they are, but they deal exclusively with the fighters in their league. This has allowed for easier matchmaking, as there is no fighting between promoters trying to get fights off the ground. It would be wise for the MMA world to stay its course.

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One thing is for sure though, it’s boxing won’t change. Way too much money to be made by the federations. No easy answer. Bottom line is that boxing has always been corrupt. And way worse than now as well, used to be controlled by the Mafia :rofl:

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