Boxerbook rating / Greatest of all time
Greatest boxers of all time
The 100 greatest boxers in history by the Boxerbook rating: how high they rose, how long they stayed there and whom they beat, each measured against the best of their own era. A list from the record alone, with the formula below.
Score: 0 is the level of an era’s ten best; higher is further above it. Era = the decade of the boxer’s peak rating.
How the list is made
Computed from the Boxerbook rating alone: the whole bout record from the 1880s to today is replayed month by month, and each boxer’s rating history is read three ways.
- Peak: the highest rating the boxer reached, counted cautiously (rating minus two uncertainties).
- Sustained: the best average of that cautious rating over 36 months in a row.
- Quality wins: wins over opponents rated above 1900 at the time, more for stronger opponents; on a logarithmic scale, so a long run of big wins counts more, but never everything.
Each boxer is compared with his own era (the decade of his peak; all years before 1920 form one era). For each of the three numbers, 0 is the average of the era’s 10 best, and 1 is one spread of the era’s top 30. The score is 40% peak, 35% sustained and 25% quality wins. Without this step the list would be almost all modern: the catalog has far more rated bouts today, so ratings run higher.
Men with at least 15 counted bouts (3,423 boxers); women’s boxing will get its own list. Old records are thinner: many early opponents have no page in the catalog yet and newspaper decisions count as results, so pre-1950 places are less certain. Recomputed every week; this list as of Oct 13, 2026.