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FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS
Joey was a guest of Teddy Atlas this Friday night at ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights at the War Memorial Arena in Fort Lauderdale. Teddy came and watched Joey work out at the gym with Michael Moorer and then they went off to the fights where Teddy was doing the color for the ESPN2 live broadcast. more on Teddy Atlas
JOEY RANKED #8 IN TYSON INDEX
Proof that fans should be excited about Taylor-Pavlik
By Don Steinberg
Special to ESPN.com
www.espn.go.com/boxing
Like a sabermetrician of the sweet science (or, better yet, like a punch-drunk Bill James), I've decided to invent a new boxing statistic. It's a measurement of pure ring excitement. I call it the Tyson Index.
You might wonder why I bother. Boxing, without any kind of central leadership, has never been good about keeping its numbers straight, unless you consider counting up to 10 an accomplishment. When you consider that the sport has been recognizing world champions since Grover Cleveland was president, you'd think the data-gathering apparatus would be pretty solid by now.
TYSON INDEX LEADERS
Boxer Index1. Edwin Valero 27.6 2. Michael Katsidis 41.33. David Haye 42.3 4. Rey Bautista 45.25. Wladimir Klitschko 45.7 6. Kelly Pavlik 497. Enzo Maccarinelli 49.1 8. Daniel P. De Leon 52.69. Jorge Linares 53.1 10. Dennis Inkin 5411. Sultan Ibragimov 55.1 12. Antonio Margarito 55.913. Jorge Arce 56.7 14. Rafael Marquez 59.215. Kermit Cintron 59.3 16. Nikolai Valuev 6017. Vic Darchinyan 60.3 18. Samuel Peter 60.519. Paul Williams 60.8 20. Adrian Diaconu 60.821. Anthony Peterson 61.6 22. Carl Froch 61.723. Oleg Maskaev 62.3 24. Allan Green 62.825. Vladimir Virchis 63.2 26. Israel Vasquez 64.427. Calvin Brock 65 28. Edison Miranda 66.329. Miguel Cotto 66.7 30. Joe Calzaghe 66.7
But no.
We have decent records of most fighters' wins and losses and knockouts -- and that's about it. We know Oscar De La Hoya landed just 21 percent of his punches against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in May. But if you want to find out the career-connect percentage of all boxers against the slippery Mayweather, or compare his numbers to other great defensive boxers in history, you can forget it. The stats don't exist. CompuBox started counting punches only about 20 years ago, and they still hit their clickers for just a small percentage of bouts, when someone like HBO is paying for it.
Still, good stats help connect fans to a sport and provide cool new things to argue about. So, undaunted, I've applied the crude data available to concoct the Tyson Index. I think it can help explain a few things about boxing -- including why insiders are so excited about the forthcoming middleweight title bout between Jermain Taylor and Kelly Pavlik, in Atlantic City on Sept. 29.
Any fan would agree that knockouts are what we are hoping to see. A guy ending all his bouts early -- think a prime Mike Tyson -- is somebody to watch. Sure, epic battles that go the full distance can be thrilling; Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier showed that. But long fights that require judges' scorecards to tell fans who won (just like in figure skating!) usually are less satisfying than a fight with a clear winner and enough action for a stoppage. Ask any casual sports fan what he thought of the action-deprived Mayweather-De La Hoya fight.
So, here's the new excitement statistic. Technically, it's the percentage of scheduled rounds that a boxer fights. Lower is better. If you're in a match scheduled for 10 rounds, and you win it in Round 4, you fought 40 percent. Your Tyson Index for that fight is 40. If you go the distance, you have the worst possible Tyson Index of 100. This stat is a more refined version of raw "knockout percentage." Here, it matters how soon you end a fight and how many rounds it was meant to go, so you get extra credit for ending bigger fights earlier. Overall, in an analysis of fights in all weight classes around the world, the average is about 72.6. Fights, on average, go 72.6 percent of the scheduled distance.
Of course, every formula needs a standard, so here are a few qualifiers. To make this stat useful, the Tyson Index adds up the results of a boxer's last 10 fights only -- that's the best indication of what each guy is capable of now. (Tyson, after his first 10 fights, had a brutally low Index of 29. That's why this is named after him.) Also, if a boxer in a scheduled 10-rounder loses in Round 4, he still gets a Tyson Index of 40. And why not? The fight wasn't less exciting just because the other guy won. However, I've made sure the list includes only fighters who have been truly road-tested, and the official leaderboard includes only fighters who are ranked in the top 10 by Ring magazine (though I've compiled a separate list of top unranked fighters as well).
TYSON INDEX LEADERS
Unranked boxers
Boxer Index1. Tyrone Brunson 18.52. Jung-Bum Kim 30.93. Peter Quillin 33.34. James Webb 37.25. Faruq Saleem 37.5 6. James Kirkland 43.97. Shannon Briggs 44.2 8. Joey Abell 44.49. Fahsan 3K Battery 45 10. Victor Oganov 45.311. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. 47.7 12. Andre Berto 48.813. Mark Suarez 50 14. Joe Mesi 52.415. Joe Greene 52.5 16. Chris Arreola 53.817. Ricardo Torres 54.9 18. Jason Litzau 57.119. Joel Julio 59.6 20. Rock Allen 63
So how do the numbers look? Well, a list of ranked fighters with the best Tyson Index numbers contains some of the sport's most exciting performers. From first-round knockout artist Edwin Valero, down to sluggers Miguel Cotto and Joe Calzaghe, these are guys that excite fight fans. Everyone on this list has gone, on average, two-thirds or fewer of his scheduled rounds in his past 10 bouts.
At the other end of the spectrum are the guys making the dullest fights in the game. If you ever considered John Ruiz the most snooze-inducing man in boxing, the numbers support you. His Tyson Index is a soporific 97.5.
Of course, over the course of a career, a fighter's numbers usually rise. He meets better opponents, and early KOs are less frequent. Shane Mosley's last 10 fights have gone a drawn-out 85.3 percent of the distance, while Mayweather's have gone 83 percent, and De La Hoya's, 82. These dreary numbers are indicative of fighters who have settled into a pattern of going the distance more often than not. And let's be honest: Those long-distance fights usually are less exciting.
Which brings us to Taylor's recent opponents. His last five fights have all gone 12 rounds. That's been uncharacteristic; he just happened to have lined up consecutive opponents with the most boring Tyson Index numbers in the business. Bernard Hopkins, when he first fought Taylor, was 90.8. Winky Wright scored a 91. Kassim Ouma: 86.8. Cory Spinks: 93.3. The only thing that does 12 more reliably than these guys is a ruler. After fighting them, Taylor's Tyson Index has slipped to a boring-side-of-average 79.
But before Taylor started fighting this dull bunch, his fights were thrillers. Taylor's Tyson Index was a sweet-and-low 57.4 before the Hopkins clinchfest. Today, that number would put him in the company of crowd pleasers like Rafael Marquez and Kermit Cintron. Now, in Pavlik, Taylor finally will be fighting an opponent who won't drag him into dullsville: Pavlik's Tyson Index is 49, meaning his fights on average go about half their scheduled distance.
Can these stats predict how exciting a boxing match will be? Well, let's say that boxing stats are about as effective as earned-run averages and quarterback ratings in predicting results. Which is to say, they can help. Mayweather and De La Hoya, going into their fight, had very high Tyson Index numbers that promised a lack of excitement -- and their bout lived up to that sleepy promise. By contrast, the numbers predicted fireworks when Pavlik (then at 48) fought Edison Miranda (60) in May. It was slugfest that ended in by TKO in the seventh with Pavlik's third knockdown of Miranda.
Statistics have limits. It's styles that make fights. It's training, desire, attitude and a hundred other X-factors that make great fights. But boxing fans are eager to see Taylor-Pavlik, and are anticipating a more exciting Taylor than we've seen in a while. The numbers show why.
Don Steinberg, a winner of the Boxing Writers Association of America's award for best column in 2005, covers boxing for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Minnesota moves to bring back sanctioned fights
Associated Press
ESPN Boxing - Updated: July 28, 2006, 6:11 PM ET
COON RAPIDS, Minn. -- Towering over the men standing around him in the steamy gym, heavyweight boxer Joey Abell looked sentimental as he explained how he'd like more of his friends to come and watch him fight.
Abell could soon get that chance, thanks to the Minnesota Boxing Commission's comeback. Former heavyweight boxer Scott LeDoux was named executive director of the commission by Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Friday. Pawlenty plans to appoint the commission's five members within a few weeks.
LeDoux, an Anoka County commissioner and former chairman of the old Boxing Board, wants to set up a nationally televised fight as early as October.
Boxing in Minnesota has suffered ever since the state pulled the plug on the 86-year-old Minnesota Board of Boxing as interest waned. Outside regulators came in to oversee fights, but that ended about a year ago when national boxing regulators raised liability concerns.
That meant any fights in the state weren't sanctioned, and didn't count on boxers' records. That left young professional boxers in a bind.
"There's lots of other pros that have been sitting around or taking bad fights out of town," said Ron Lyke, a trainer at the Anoka-Coon Rapids Boxing Club, where Abell trains.
Abell said seven of his eight professional fights have been in other states. The 25-year-old from Champlin said he was booed in Philadelphia when he went up against a hometown favorite.
"Get the fight around here, you know -- get the people to see it," said Abell, who now lives in Coon Rapids. "There's a lot of people saying that they'd like to see me."
Lawmakers and Pawlenty revived the boxing commission this year, along with a $50,000 budget.
Last summer, the Association of Boxing Commissions stopped sanctioning fights in states that didn't have their own regulators. It was impossible to get insurance for those fights, said Randy Renfrow, who heads the group's regulatory guidelines committee.
LeDoux -- who went 33-13-4 during a boxing career that ended in 1983 -- said he hopes to restore the quality of boxing in Minnesota after what he described as uneven and permissive outside regulation. He also promised to step up oversight of "tough man" contests, where he said some competitors have been known to fight drunk.
"The number one thing in boxing is safety. We are there to protect the fighter," said LeDoux.