Does BoxRec suck?

[NHB7]

I don't follow boxing that religiously, but I do love to read about the history of boxing. So i was recently reading about Jack Dempsey and thought I'd take a look at his opponents records. I was excited to see that BoxRec had soooo much awesome info. Not just win/loss and method but their opponents records at the time they fought including their records in their last 6 fights.

Anyway, as I was reading the record of Billy Brennan (an opponent of Jack D in 1920), and I quickly noticed that they had Jack Ds record at the time they fought incorrect which Wikipedia further verified. Then I noticed Brennan had an opennent named Ole Anderson who was 7-5-5 when they fought according to BoxRec, but several fights later they fought again and again Ole's record was listed as being 7-5-5 at the time they fought. Then I clicked on Ole and it turns out he had dozens of more fights before they fought that was clearly not included in this data.

So does BoxRec just suck? Is there something better?

 

[Kovalev's "Man Bag"]

No, not really. There's another site called FightsRec but it isn't as good as BoxRec. BoxRec's inaccuracies have been known about and they've been criticized for it for many years. You can read about it on their own Wikipedia page. But, it's the best we've got. Take it with a grain of salt and cross-check with another source or two to check for consistency.

 

[Seano]

Depends on if it suits your argument or not.

Its a good resource. There's a lot of info there.

 

[Sunfish]

A lot of Asian fighters look like they've only fought people with losing records where the truth is that their smaller fights just don't get updated, they can't update for every fight and stay a free resource

 

[ProBoxingInsidr]

wel, they were not counting any of the fights ole anderson had as a member of the 4 horseman at the time he fought Dempsey, so that might add to the confusion

 

[Kovalev's "Man Bag"]

Hey TS. Some other options you could pursue would be to see if the fighter in question has an official (or even a maintained unofficial) website that lists their fight record. For example, Dempsey does, and it was relaunched in 2005. You could cross-check it with BoxRec's and other sources and go from there. It only takes a few minutes.

http://www.cmgww.com/sports/dempsey/stats.htm

The fighter doesn't even have to necessarily be famous in this day and age to have a website that you can check. There are a lot of boxing forums too on well known and established sites, like this one, where you can also make a thread and simply ask about a particular fighter's record or do so on some of the more established YouTube boxing channels. Chances are you'll find fans of that fighter with accurate info, even if the fighter fought in an early era. Old-timers and true boxing historians are still around on some of these forums/channels and BoxRec has their own forums as well.

Running a Google search alone will return a wealth of information in most cases. In regard to Wiki pages, obviously most Wikipedia pages for fighters take their fight record info from BoxRec, so check the source of the record. In MMA's case, almost always from Sherdog's Fight Finder database. As a last resort, if the fighter is still alive or if they have someone operating a social media account on their behalf, you could shoot them a tweet or DM on Twitter (or Facebook, IG, Google+, etc) and try and get some clarification.

It's just a matter of being resourceful. Is the information that was once available no longer available on the web? See if it's still in Google's index in their web cache or try the internet archive's -> http://archive.org/web

For rich boxing history, besides what you can find scattered on the web, the oldest running boxing magazine is Boxing News. They've been publishing since 1909. The Ring started publishing theirs in 1922. You can order their magazines, including back issues, and subscribe to their websites.

http://www.boxingnewsonline.net
http://ringtv.craveonline.com

That's all I've got.

 

[NHB7]

Hey TS. Some other options you could pursue would be to see if the fighter in question has an official (or even a maintained unofficial) website that lists their fight record. For example, Dempsey does, and it was relaunched in 2005. You could cross-check it with BoxRec's and other sources and go from there. It only takes a few minutes.

http://www.cmgww.com/sports/dempsey/stats.htm

The fighter doesn't even have to necessarily be famous in this day and age to have a website that you can check. There are a lot of boxing forums too on well known and established sites, like this one, where you can also make a thread and simply ask about a particular fighter's record or do so on some of the more established YouTube boxing channels. Chances are you'll find fans of that fighter with accurate info, even if the fighter fought in an early era. Old-timers and true boxing historians are still around on some of these forums/channels and BoxRec has their own forums as well.

Running a Google search alone will return a wealth of information in most cases. In regard to Wiki pages, obviously most Wikipedia pages for fighters take their fight record info from BoxRec, so check the source of the record. In MMA's case, almost always from Sherdog's Fight Finder database. As a last resort, if the fighter is still alive or if they have someone operating a social media account on their behalf, you could shoot them a tweet or DM on Twitter (or Facebook, IG, Google+, etc) and try and get some clarification.

It's just a matter of being resourceful. Is the information that was once available no longer available on the web? See if it's still in Google's index in their web cache or try the internet archive's -> http://archive.org/web

That's all I've got.

A far more thoughtful reply than I anticipated or expected. Thank you.

 

[Kovalev's "Man Bag"]

A far more thoughtful reply than I anticipated or expected. Thank you.

No problem man. Since you enjoy reading about boxing history so much, I just edited it a minute ago before you replied to include this.

For rich boxing history, besides what you can find scattered on the web, the oldest running boxing magazine is Boxing News. They've been publishing since 1909. The Ring started publishing theirs in 1922. You can order their magazines, including back issues, and subscribe to their websites.

http://www.boxingnewsonline.net
http://ringtv.craveonline.com

That's all I've got.

 

[*Z*]

Their info on old fights isn't as complete as the modern stuff. Still a good resource.