Which Countries Are Doing the Best in the World of Boxing, and Why?
In a short amount of time, the boxing landscape has changed dramatically. Shifting economic and social climates around the world have finally taken hold, leading to a new look for the sport.
In order to achieve a statistical comparison, I took two sets of Ring ratings?the most recent issue and one from 1998. The reason for picking Ring was that they normally have very sound rankings with a history that allows one to reference rankings from deep in the past. I?m only going back a dozen years. It?s not a lot of time, but so much has changed.
With the top 10 fighters in each class represented, that’s 170 + fighters whom are ranked across 17 divisions, including champions. There are certainly other ways to measure this, but this chart indicates how many top-ten fighters each country had in 1998, compared with today.
1998……… 2010
United States 59 25
Mexico 23 21
Russia (+ fmr. republics) 4 19
United Kingdom 8 11
Japan 3 15
Thailand 11 4
South Africa 5 9
Rest of Africa 4 4
Philippines 4 7
Argentina 4 5
Germany 4 4
Puerto Rico 2 6
Venezuela 4 3
Colombia 4 2
France 5 1
Poland 1 4
Canada 1 3
South Korea 3 0
Italy 2 1
Panama 0 3
Nicaragua 1 2
Indonesia 0 2
Romania 0 2
Cuba 1 1
Dominican Republic 0 2
Iraq 0 1
Spain 0 1
Denmark 0 1
Slovenia 0 1
Jamaica 0 1
Haiti 0 1
Hungary 0 1
Yugoslavia 0 1
