Friend of the site (and quality boxing writer in his own right) Hamilton Nolan recently proposed a fun idea to me, based on our mutual slavish fanboyishness for YURIORKIS GAMBOA! Gamboa, you see, never cracks my pound-for-pound top-20 list, and Mr. Nolan thinks he should, based primarily on his stratospheric talent, whereas I tend to make my lists based heavily on in-ring accomplishment with only a modest dash of consideration for stratospheric talent. So what if, Mr. Nolan proposed, I were to make a list of the best fighters based solely on talent? Where would I put my (our) precious GAMBOA! then?
This is the result of that thought experiment. It is not an approach I endorse. I'm not saying it's a bad thing for the purposes of prompting discussion, mind you, or else I wouldn't do it. I just think that any kind of ranking system should be based more on what a fighter accomplishes than by what I think he might. Boxers, after all, often prove themselves to be less than we thought they were after the first time they face some trouble, and sometimes boxers with lesser talent who appear unlikely to conquer the world find a way. The best measure of how good a fighter is, I insist, is repeatedly besting the highest-level opposition.
There is no criteria to this list, no real serious calculus, other than picking people who had at least advanced to the "contender" level -- no prospects. It's just who I think is good, based on my personal impression of who I think might win a lot of fights and have some talent and stuff. And just to give you an idea of how ephemeral it is, GAMBOA!, despite my generally being pleased with his performance over the weekend, may have fallen a spot or two from where I'd have put him before Saturday, owing to a performance that wasn't as good as expected.
