A few of the writers, and especially the editors, have really dropped the ball on the 2011 rankings issue of "Ring Magazine". Never have I seen this low of a quality effort by a prestigious print magazine. Print journalism has the advantage of not needing to be a 'right now" phenomena. Web editors may miss many things, because there is a rotating deadline of "immediately!" This is not true of a monthly print magazine, which makes the following editor blunders so surprising and cringe-worthy.
Did you really think you could print an entire article about U.S. Olympians, that was based on false information? There were no U.S. Olympic Gold Medalists between 1992 and 2004? Have you ever heard of David Reid? It was embarrassing enough that a paid writer would make this error, but for an editor to miss it is unacceptable. Also, did you check the records of the 'honorable mention' fighters? Amazing how not one of them was correct, and most of the fighters ended up with more KO's than total fights. There were other mistakes, including which belt, etc, but I know I am not the only one to complain about this, so I'll spare you reading the whole list once again.
One other problem, and this is my opinion rather than established fact, is that the Ring ratings are much more affected by the alphabet belts than you let on. Maybe that should be an argument with the old guard as well, but you're in charge now, and should do an overhaul where it matters, on the rankings. The 'Ring's' championship policy is supposed to grant one champion, in order to clear up confusion about the roster of belts out there. Maybe they do not matter at the championship level, but a glance into the top ten show that they clearly do make some difference.
Vyacheslav Senchenko is ranked number 5 at Welterweight. This puts him ahead of Kell Brook, Selcuk Aydin, and Mike Jones. I picked those three as my examples since they, like Senchenko, are undefeated. Certainly those three have fought better opposition than has Senchenko, yet because he holds the WBA strap, he is ranked ahead of them. At 175lbs, Nathan Cleverly, who has fought no one, is ranked ahead of "arguably" linear champ Zsolt Erdei. Granted, Erdei's achievements lately are not the best... but he is still unbeaten, and has wins over many legit fighters, which Cleverly cannot claim. Yet, the Welshman holds the WBO belt, so here he is.
Next time you decide to 'clean house' of a lot of experienced and well-liked writers, perhaps you should either drop your price while you adjust, or do the firing slowly. It looks as if the parents are out of town, and the kids took over. The resulting mess is not pretty.
Chris Strait
www.convictedartist.com
RING MAGAZINE... A DISGRACEFUL ISSUE
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