How We Build Our Rankings: The Ringside Ledger Method

Every ranking is an argument. Ours is no different. When we put one fighter above another, we are saying: on the evidence of what they have done in the ring or the cage, this fighter has the stronger case. Not the louder promoter. Not the bigger social following. The stronger case.

This piece lays out how we build that case. It covers the factors we weigh, how much each one counts, how we treat losses, weight-class moves and long layoffs, and why our lists will sometimes look nothing like the ones published by the sanctioning bodies. Read it once and our rankings should make more sense, even when you disagree with them. Especially when you disagree with them.

Rankings are opinions, built carefully

Let us be clear from the first line. Our rankings are our own opinion. They are not official, they carry no title implications, and no commission or promotion uses them to make matches.

That does not make them casual. Tomasz Wolski, who leads our rankings work, scores every fight he watches and compares his cards with the judges'. The rankings come out of the same habit: watch the fights, write down what happened, and then argue about what it means. Records, weights and results are checked against official commission and promotion sources before anything goes on a list. The judgement on top of those facts is ours.

We want our reasoning to be visible. If you can see the method, you can challenge it properly. That is better than a list that simply appears.

The factors we weigh

No single number decides a ranking. We look at six main factors and weigh them together. The table below shows each one and roughly how much it counts. These are qualitative weights, not a formula, because fights do not reduce neatly to arithmetic.

Quality of wins

This is the backbone. A résumé, in ranking terms, is the list of opponents a fighter has beaten. We care far more about who than how many. Ten wins against fighters with losing records tell us less than one clear win over a contender in his or her prime.

We judge opponent quality at the time of the fight, not with hindsight in either direction. Beating a fighter who later became a champion is impressive, but beating them in their third pro bout is not the same as beating them at their peak. Likewise, a win over a former champion on a long losing slide counts for less than the name suggests.

Head-to-head

If two fighters in the same division have met, and one won clearly, the winner usually ranks higher. That sounds obvious. It gets complicated fast.

A close or disputed decision carries less weight than a stoppage or a wide, clean decision. A result from years ago carries less than one from last season. And head-to-head can be overridden if the loser has since built a clearly better résumé. We do not let one old result freeze a division in place for ever.

Recency and activity

Recency asks how fresh the evidence is. Activity asks how much evidence there is. They are related but different. A fighter can have one recent, excellent win and little else in the last two years: high recency, low activity.

We favour fighters who keep testing themselves. Regular fights against ranked opposition give us more to judge, and they show a willingness to take risks that deserves credit.

Losses in context

A loss is not a full stop. In combat sports, the best fighters often lose because they fight the best fighters. Punishing every defeat equally would reward the careful matchmaking we least want to encourage.

So we ask questions. Who was the loss against? A defeat to the division's top fighter barely moves someone down, especially if it was competitive. A loss to an unranked opponent hurts more. How close was it? A split decision that could have gone either way is very different from a one-sided stoppage. When was it? An old loss followed by a run of quality wins matters less with each passing fight.

We also look at disputed decisions. Where our own card, clearly labelled as Ringside Ledger's scorecard, differed from the official result, we note it. But the official result stands on our lists. We may soften the effect of a loss we scored the other way. We do not reverse it. For more on how we score rounds, see how a boxing round is actually scored and how MMA judging works.

Weight-class moves

Fighters move between divisions all the time. Sometimes they chase bigger fights, sometimes they struggle to make weight, sometimes they simply grow. We handle moves case by case, but with a few steady rules.

• Moving up: a fighter does not carry their old ranking into the new division automatically. We look for at least one meaningful win at the new weight before ranking them highly there. A strong résumé below earns them a closer look, not a free place.
• Moving down: the same principle applies. Size advantages at a lower weight can be real, but we rank on results at that weight.
• Fighting in two divisions: if a fighter is active in both, we may rank them in both, but only where the résumé in each supports it.
• Leaving a division: once a fighter has clearly committed to a new weight, we remove them from the old one. We do not hold spaces open for fighters who have moved on.

How we handle inactivity

Layoffs happen for many reasons: injuries, contract disputes, promotional politics, personal life. We do not speculate about the reasons, and we never publish rumours about a fighter's health. We simply note the gap in activity.

Our approach is gradual. A fighter who has not competed for around a year starts to drift down as active fighters below them build stronger cases. After a longer absence, typically around eighteen months to two years with no scheduled return, we usually remove them from the list altogether. When they return and win, they come back in at a level that reflects both their past résumé and their current form.

This is a judgement call, not a timer. A fighter who is out for a short spell after a major win keeps more of their place than one who was already drifting before the layoff.

A worked example

Here is how the factors play out in practice. The fighters below are entirely hypothetical. Fighter A, B and C do not represent any real people, and the records are invented purely to show the method.

How do we rank them?

Fighter B goes first. B has the best recent win, the head-to-head result over A, and solid activity. The old loss is far enough back, and followed by enough wins, that it matters little.

Fighter A goes second. A's résumé is strong, but the best win is older and activity is thin. The split-decision loss to B was close. If we had scored that fight for A on our own card, we might keep the gap between them narrow. We still respect the official result.

Fighter C goes third. C is unbeaten, active and exciting to watch. But the best win is over an unranked prospect. Highlight-reel stoppages are the lowest-weighted factor on our table for a reason: impressive performances against modest opposition do not outweigh proven wins against the division's best. One quality win and C could jump both of them.

That is the whole method in miniature. Résumé and head-to-head lead. Recency, activity and losses refine. Style is the tie-breaker.

How we differ from official rankings

Boxing has four major sanctioning bodies: the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO. Each publishes its own rankings, and each uses them to order contenders for its own title. MMA promotions publish rankings too, usually covering only fighters under contract with that promotion.

Those lists serve a purpose. They help decide who fights for which belt. But they have limits that ours try to avoid.

• Belts are not the same as résumé. Sanctioning-body rankings are tied to their own championships and mandatory challengers. A fighter can sit high on one body's list without having beaten anyone of note, and can be missing from another's entirely.
• Four lists, four answers. In boxing, the same fighter can be ranked very differently by different bodies. We produce one list per division, regardless of which belts anyone holds.
• Promotional borders. A promotion's rankings usually cover only its own roster. Ours can include fighters from anywhere, as long as we can check their records against official sources.
• No fees, no politics. We do not take sanctioning fees or have fighters under contract. Our only interest is getting the order right, as we see it.

Holding a title still matters to us, because winning one usually means beating a good fighter. But we rank the win, not the belt. For our separate cross-division list, see what pound-for-pound lists measure.

Where we land

Rankings should start arguments, not end them. Ours are built from verified records, weighted by the quality of wins and direct results, and adjusted for activity, recency and context. They are opinion, clearly labelled as ours, and we update them as fighters give us new evidence.

If you think we have someone in the wrong place, make the case on résumé. That is the language we rank in.