Who was the greatest of all-time? A historical analysis by a complex network of professional boxing

Abstract

Abstract This study seeks to examine and compare boxers throughout history creating a pound-for-pound list of the different fighters. A PageRank algorithm was utilized to rank the boxers from the network to determine a list of the top 10 fighters from 1897 to 2019. Two data sets were utilized, a truncated subset and a larger data set, to explore the impact of network size on the rank of boxers. Additionally, the researchers systematically varied the damping factor of the PageRank algorithm to determine the effects on the rankings. A discussion of the results includes a comparison of journalistic rankings and those from a points-based system from the respected boxing website BoxRec.