Your philosophy on building realistic fighter w/l records and rankings?

[stevebydac]

I've got a 150 fighter deep fictional heavyweight world in TBCB 2.0 (soon to be 2.5). I find it challenging to make the world realistic. Examples:

1) If a highly ranked fighter loses to a lowly fighter, he can lose 200, 300 or even 400 performance points. This can drop the highly ranked fighter 20, 30 spots in the rankings. In the real world, that would never happen, he'd drop only a few spots.

2) In the real world, the elite fighters have records like 40-1, or 35-2, or 45-3-1, etc. In TBCB, it seems like you have two choices -- let your top guys pad their records frequently with 1 rated stiffs or tomato cans (which makes them vulnerable to my issue #1 above), or have them in their own group where they beat the heck out of each other and have more losses on their resume. I've got about 3 guys at the top of my pile, and another 15 who are right behind them and capable of beating them on a given night. Then I've got another 20 who are just a bit behind that group in talent. So that's 38 guys who, if they constantly fought each other, would suffer a bunch of losses - they're too evenly matched. That's not like real life.

3) World Championship fights - here again, if the champ is always running into the #1-5 contenders and never fighting softies, TBCB will never have a longtime champion like Louis, Monzon, etc. The competition is pretty stiff and the top handful of fighters will be consistently swapping the belt.

I've read several excellent threads on your universes here. Could you summarize in a paragraph or three how you design your scheduling so that, in the end, you feel that your world has realistic rankings and records? Thanks!

[mh2365]

I totally disagree with #1 ... I think if a top rated fighter loses to a scrub IRL he will plummet in any rating that there is no money changing hands.

I have the fighters fight TC's while they are at beginner, then they have a 50% chance of fighting TC's while pre, post, and end. But while prime they only fight real fighters.

All my stuff is random based. With the titles, I have them fight the top ranked fighter who is scheduled to fight that month. The only catch is that they have to have won their last fight. I would say it is a top 5 fighter just as often as it is a 15-20 ranked fighter. I have had some pretty long reigns.

[stevebydac]

Thanks mh. I guess a major difference between you and me is that my (non-championship) fights are TOTALLY random from day one. So a highly ranked beginner could fight tough competition from the outset. I like your method better. They can pad their records for a while. I also like how you downgrade their competition post-prime. In my world they keep getting blasted regularly by the elite.

Currently, I have my champs fight 4x per year: the #1 contender, a #2-5, a #6-10 and a fighter of their choice (which could be a TC). I'm going to insist that the latter fighter own a winning record from now on. (What has been irking me is that my undefeated world champ was dominating a TC and then lost the fight when he got a cut over his eye and the ref stopped it. He lost over 400 PPs and fell from champ to #22 in the rankings. I don't want that to happen again)

[aaaaaaaaa]

I use three groups for my autoscheduling. I have way more TCs than real fighters in my uni.

Begin: Aproximately 10-15 real fighters all at beginning stage and then 90-100 cans. They fight 6 rounders.

Club: About 30 real and 40 cans. This is the prospects at Pre-Prime and the journeymen. (Mel Turnbow, Charlie Green, Garth Grubb etc). 8 rounders here

Top: Somethin like 20 real and 10 cans. This is the fighters at Prime, Post Prime, End or some of the best Pre-Primers (perf. pts is the decider, i have 0 at the moment). This ranges from ranking 12 to like 60. There are few top guys here, and those who there will have an easy time moving to world.

World: Top 10 and regional title holders. Manually scheduled.

This allows for many undefeateds. Ive had a TC go 8-0. (28-31 now)

As for champs, Muhammad Ali had 14 title defenses in a row before stumbling into Joe Frazier.

Hope i helped.

[stevebydac]

Great stuff, very helpful aaaaaaaaaaa!

Almost forgot, do any of you guys keep track of how many times your fighters meet each other? I started with a small world, so there were a lot of rematches especially at the beginning. Do you care if some TCs or lesser fighters meet each other 5 or 6 times?

I've been manually tracking this on an Excel sheet, but as my world gets bigger that is getting time-consuming and I wonder if I should bother anymore.

[kenyan_cheena]

One of the things that bugs me about real life boxing is that some fighters can make it all the way to the top of the rankings by looking good against limited opposition. That's one thing I'm keen to avoid in my uni.

Once I've finished my initial tournaments I'll be using my own rankings. I will completely ignore the performance points. Below is the text from a post I made in late 2006 describing how my rankings will work:

The HBF will have 120 world ranked fighters (including the World Champ) grouped into ten tiers of 12 fighters each. Tier one will be the WC plus ranks 1-11, tier two will be 12-23 and so on.

I have a yearly schedule I've worked out where fighters are either challenging higher ranked opponents to move up or defending their ranking against lower ranked foes.

Example:

The fighters in tier 3 (24-35) are taking on those in tier 2 (12-23). So the tier 3 guys are challenging to move up the rankings while the tier 2 guys are defending their own ranking. These are the matchups:

12v35
13v34
14v33
15v32
16v31
17v30
18v29
19v28
20v27
21v26
22v25
23v24

The fighters in bold are the winners and will now assume ranks 12-23 based on their ranking beforehand.

13 moves to 12
14 moves to 13
16 moves to 14
17 moves to 15
20 moves to 16
22 moves to 17
23 moves to 18
26 moves to 19
28 moves to 20
29 moves to 21
32 moves to 22
35 moves to 23

As you can see, the fighters who have scored upsets (32 and 35 in particular) have made big moves while the higher ranked guys who were expected to win have not moved so much.

The losers will now all occupy the 3rd tier of rankings, like so:

12 drops to 24
15 drops to 25
18 drops to 26
19 drops to 27
21 drops to 28
24 drops to 29
25 drops to 30
27 drops to 31
30 drops to 32
31 drops to 33
33 drops to 34
34 drops to 35

Again, the guys who were upset have suffered a big fall in their ranking, while those who were expected to lose haven't.

Under my format, fighters will compete more often the lower they are ranked, like so:

Tier 1 fight every 12 weeks
Tiers 2-3 fight every 8 weeks
Tiers 4-6 fight every 6 weeks
Tiers 7-10 fight every 4 weeks

The restrictions are that fighters from each tier can only fight opponents ranked either in their own tier, one tier above them or one below them, so you won't see the fighters from tier 1 fighting those in tier 6 or 7. This system will allow for constant movement in the rankings and it will also provide a difficult path to the top of the rankings, as fighters won't be able to pad their record against a bunch of stiffs and then challenge for the title. The only way to earn that is by constantly beating those ranked above you.

[mh2365]

I decided to do that with Post Prime fighters just to kind of simulate them going back to the clubs ... you have guys like Tua and Briggs fighting the stiff tour hoping to get 1 more shot.

[Cap]

My AU is made up mostly of historical fighters with a smattering of fictional guys I've thrown in here and there to fill ranks of different countries, etc. Most of these fictional fighters are 1s and 2s. Then come the legions of pork 'n beaners, real guys rated from 1 to 3 I guess. Then the journeymen. Then what amounts to gatekeepers. Then the top echelon of the division. As in real life, most of the top guys build their careers on the lesser lights, a few stumble along the way, but eventually reach the top ranks. Again, as in real life, getting a shot at the title is chiefly based on the whim of the promoter (me). Often the best don't fight each other until they make it into the top 20.

Cap