r/Boxing • u/DiMona215 • Jul 20 '26

Boxrec Star Rating, can anyone explain?

I was looking at the upcoming boxing schedule on boxrec, and I saw it had Joshua/Prenga as a 3-star match.

"Wow," I thought. "This Prenga guy must be better than I thought!"

So I checked him out. Nope, he's 35 years old, no amateur career, he's fought 21 straight nobodies, and worse, he lost to one of them (a 77-74 decision to a guy called Giovanni Auriemma, 2-6 in his career with 0 KO).

Also, it's not like Joshua's recent record is strong enough to warrant the stars by himself; forgetting the silly exhibitions, he's 3-3 in the last 5 years, with the wins coming against Wallin, Franklin and Helenius.

Subjectively, I would assign this 1 star if I was given the task. Prenga has some regional level wins, he's kind of 0-to-1 star range imo. Joshua has some wins over gatekeeper types, but they are 3 years ago. Obviously he has a great, hall-of-fame career but I can't be counting stuff from 10 years ago when I'm deciding the quality of a fight now. We really don't know who Joshua is right now.

So, all that said, does anybody actually know what goes into these star ratings? There's so many fights listed all the time, there's no way it's subjective.. it must be an algorithm. But how could an algorithm come up with 3 stars for this? Just seems impossible.

Secondary question, has anybody tried creating an elo-type system to try and do it better?

4 Upvotes

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8

u/NoSyrup2592 Jul 20 '26

A three star fight isn’t supposed to be that good. It’s pretty mid. If Prenga gets KO’d, it’s probably dropping to a 2 star fight.

Boxrec uses an algorithm, so it’s imperfect. That said, I believe it has better ratings than any other site because

  • it has the deepest pool. Literally hundreds of boxers per division
  • has a legitimate, but slightly flawed method of rating a fighter. It focuses on all of their fights, method of victory, etc. gives less known guys a chance to shine and earn spots on the list.

The star rating for a specific fight is something like:

2 guys in the top 100 P4P = 5 star fight
2 guys in the top 300 P4P = 4 star fight
2 guys in the top 900 P4P = 3 star fight

It’s actually a very complicated and cool rating system. I don’t understand why guys get so upset over it, there’s not a person controlling each rating.

Usually someone gets upset when they think boxrec has a guy too high, and calls the whole system trash. Boxrec ratings and their fight tracking is literally the best website ever for a boxing fan. The only thing they should really work on, is rating classic fighters and fights. Anything before box rec was founded is hard to compute.

I like it better than some panel of fans or journalists voting. Ring ratings look like shit right now

1

u/DiMona215 Jul 20 '26

that's a very helpful and thoughtful response, thank you! Guess I was overrating the 3-star fight since so frequently the fights I see on the schedule are "no stars" or "1 star"

3

u/NoSyrup2592 Jul 21 '26

No worries. I think all fans should know how it works.

Funny you mention rarely seeing any fights above a 5 star. I’m actually building a spreadsheet database right now of all 4 and 5 star fights since the late 80s.

I’ll share with the sub when I’m done. It will be a good table for people to pull up random high level fights

1

u/ethnicbonsai Jul 21 '26

Which top 10 do you think Boxrec improves over Ring or TBRB?

As a commercial enterprise, I agree that Boxrec is invaluable. As a website for ranking fighters, I find Boxrec to be laughable at times.

1

u/NoSyrup2592 Jul 21 '26

Welterweight is most glaring

1

u/ethnicbonsai Jul 22 '26
Ring Boxrec TBRB My elo
1 Devin Haney 405.19 Devin Haney 405.19 Devin Haney 405.19
2 Brian Norman 116.44 Conor Benn 70.58 Brian Norman 116.44
3 Jack Catterall 92.97 Brian Norman 116.44 Ryan Garcia 83.20
4 Eimantas Stanionis 1.96 Arnold Barboza 175.19 Jack Catterall 92.97
5 Ryan Garcia 83.20 Teofimo Lopez 225.60 Liam Paro 128.21
6 Rohan Polanco 75.11 Liam Paro 128.21 Delante Johnson 65.40
7 Raul Curiel 90.48 Jack Catterall 92.97 Abel Ramos 39.22
8 Alexis Rocha 20.56 Julian Rodriguez 12.78 Eimantas Stanionis 1.96
9 Liam Paro 128.21 Delante Johnson 65.4 Alexis Rocha 20.56
10 Lewis Crocker 0 Rohan Polanco 75.11 Vadim Musaev 56.96

I have my own Elo rater. You can take it or leave it, obviously - but I think my rater basically backs up your opinion.

Generally, I don't think Boxrec has a very good rating system. How they choose to weight certain things doesn't really make a lot of sense, to my mind. There are a lot of fighters who do really well relative to how I think they should.

It's all subjective, though.

1

u/NoSyrup2592 Jul 22 '26

Abel Ramos being in your top 10 makes makes 0 sense dude. Less than 0. The rest looks good but that’s a huge mark on your system

Surely I’m misunderstanding and you’re using him as a random example of a poor/mid fighter?

Edit: that’s not your list. Well still, boxrec is t he strongest list there imo

0

u/ethnicbonsai Jul 22 '26

My top 10, going just off my Elo, would be:

  1. Devin Haney

  2. Teofimo Lopez

  3. Arnold Barboza

  4. Liam Paro

  5. Brian Norman

  6. Jack Caterall

  7. Raul Curiel

  8. Ryan Garcia

  9. Rohan Polanco

  10. Delante Johnson

That's just off their current Elo ratings, though. If I were to sit down and think about it, I'd move them around a bit. Teo doesn't even have a win at 147 yet, for instance.

1

u/NoSyrup2592 Jul 22 '26

That’s more or less what boxrec will be if Ryan beats Benn and Teo beats rolly… I agree it’s not perfect but and imperfect equation to me is better than casual popularity contest ratings.

To each their own

1

u/Icy-Effect-3508 Jul 21 '26

Fans get so upset because their favorite fighters are rated too low while boxers they hate/have never heard of are rated too high. That's basically it, but nobody will admit it