How the score is calculated

Everyone has an opinion. I like systems.

I never saw Rocky Marciano fight. I've seen video, but I can't imagine he'd have lasted six rounds with Muhammad Ali. Ali, in my opinion, would have cut his face into such a mess that the referee would stop it.

The Sugar Ray Leonard I saw beat Thomas Hearns and the Mike Tyson who left Trevor Berbick a stumbling mess are, in my opinion, two of the 10 greatest fighters of all time. When looking at the entirety of their accomplishments, though, they are nowhere near the top 10.

I set out to take opinion out of this ranking and just come up with a fair way to statistically compare boxers across weight classes and across eras. It is not an easy thing to do. Fifty years ago, there usually was just one champion and boxers fought seven or eight times a year just to make enough money to pay the rent. Today, there are four major championship belts and you'll see potential Hall of Fame fighters retire with fewer than 30 fights on their record.

Over the years, I tried several versions of this ranking and this is my latest - and best - effort.
Here's how it's broken down using No. 100 (as of Jan. 1, 2019) Carlos Zarate to illustrate how it works.

There are three scores that are added together for a final score.

• Point totals from significant fights - title fights or fights against Hall of Fame fighters. 
• Point totals from non-significant fights - non-title and non-Hall of Fame fighter fights. 
• Point totals from the five highest point total fights - I'll explain later why this is added on. 

The first section - point totals from significant fights. 

A fighter can get a maximum of 300 points from a significant fight.

You can get 100 points for the result of the fight.

• 100 points for a knockout or technical knockout.
• 90 points for unanimous decision win.
• 75 points for split decision win.
• 50 points for a draw.
• 25 points for a split decision loss (meaning a judge thought you won).
• 0 points for a unanimous decision loss.
• -25 points for getting knocked out.

You can get 100 points if it's an undisputed title fight. For this ranking, only the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO currently counts as a major belt. Pre-alphabet soup, the two that mattered were the NYSAC and the NBA.

• 100 points for all belts (two, three or four).
• 80 points for three of four.
• 70 points for two of three.
• 60 points for one of two or two of four.
• 45 points for one of three.
• 40 points for one of four.
• 20 points for a lesser title. There are lots of these.

You can get 100 points depending upon whether the opponent is in one, two or all three of the major boxing Hall of Fames.

The ones I'm including are the International Boxing Hall of Fame, the World Boxing Hall of Fame (which appears to be defunct) and the rising Las Vegas Boxing Hall of Fame.

To get the 100, a fighter would have to have beaten an opponent that's in the IBHOF and either the World or Las Vegas hall of Fame.

Once those points have been calculated, you multiply the score by the winning percentage of the opponent at the time of the fight. Beating an undefeated fighter is more important than beating someone who 45-5.

So to get the 300 points, you have to beat an undefeated fighter for all of the belts who eventually is inducted into multiple halls of fame.

It doesn't happen often. In fact, so far having calculated more than 150 fighters, I've found just five boxers who earned perfect 300s.

• Sugar Ray Leonard knockout of Thomas Hearns.
• Muhammad Ali knockout of George Foreman.
• Mike Tyson knockout of Michael Spinks.
• Jack Johnson knockout of James Jeffries.
• George Foreman knockout of Joe Frazier.

Looking at Carlos Zarate, he had 12 significant fights. His best score was 160 points against Danilo Batista. Zarate knocked out Batista in a fight for one of the major belts at the time and Batista was undefeated. Mathematically, that worked out this way: 100 points (KO) + 60 (one of two major belots) x 100% (Batista was undefeate) = 160.

Zarate went 8-4 with 8 KOs in his significant fights. He only beat one hall of famer (Alfonso Zamora) and drew with another (Lupe Pintor). He also was KOd twice (Wilfredo Gomez an D Daniel Zaragoza). In the end, he totaled 1,124.2 points in his significant fights.

Points from non-significant fights

Archie Moore went 186-23-10. Willie Pep was 229-11-1. Sugar Ray Robinson was 174-19-6.

In contrast, Sven Ottke retired in 2004 with a 34-0-0 mark. Andre Ward walked away in 2017 with a 32-0-0 mark.

How do you compare Ottke and Ward with Pep, Moore and Robinson?

I came up with the magic number of 50.

Fighters can score points over 50 fights.

You get 100 percent of the points you earn in the significant fights up to 50. No fighter yet has had 50 fights against champions or hall of famers.

After that, you get a percentage of the points you earned in non-significant fights. Let's look at Zarate.

Zarate was nearly perfect in his non-significant fights. He was 58-0 with 55 KOs. Because of the high number of KOs, Zarate earned 5,770 points in those 58 fights. But he only could include 38 fights towards his 50. Thirty eight divided by 58 equals 65.5 percent. So I took his 5,770 points and multiplied it by 65.5 percent. That reduced his points to 3,779.35. 

Then I added up the winnings percentages of his opponents, which turned out to be 71.6 percent (this is actually a very high winning percentage for opponents) and took that 3,779.35 and multiplied it by 71.6 percent. That gave Zarate a final point total of 2,707.1 points in non-significant fights. 

Point totals from the five highest point total fights

I added a final section giving fighters points for their five peak fights to boost boxers who took chances and faced top competition. There are lots of title fights today and quite a few weak hall of famers. This essentially doubles the point totals for a fighter's best wins. Sugar Ray Leonard's win over Hearns should be weighted more than Joe Calzaghe's myriad wins over middling competition.

In Zarate's case, his best five wins were:

• Danilo Batista, 160.0
• Paul Ferreri, 150.9
• Alfonso Zamora, 150.0
• Rodolfo Martinez, 149.3
• Andres Hernandez, 141.2.

His score for his PEAK 5 was just 751.5. That ranks just 120th out of the fighters I've graded so far. The fact he fought so few great fighters is what dragged him down in the rankings.

So Zarate's three scores were:
Significant fights - 1,124.2
Non-significant fights - 2,707.1
PEAK 5 fights - 751.5
Final score - 4,582.8