[professordp]

Terry Krueger was a late-60s/early-70s "knockout artist" in the Bowie Adams/LaMar Clark mold. That's to say he compiled an "impressive" record of early round kayos over far less than token opposition.

His handlers no doubt picked people off street corners, pulled them out of bars, and I suspect, conducted a few late night raids on local mortuaries for his opponents. Like Adams and Clark, virtually all of Terry's "victims" were either local punching bags or guys who's only recorded pro bout in BoxRec is a knockout loss to Krueger. This accounts for his record showing thirty-three of his thirty-four wins coming by way of KO/TKO.

His reputed power was further enhanced by two particular knockout victories.

Krueger scored one of the fastest kayo wins in recorded boxing history by dispatching his opponent in twelve seconds of the first round--and that included the ten-count!

The guy on the recieving end was one Kame De Kabbajar, who according to the September 7, 1970 issue of Sports Illustrated, travelled 7,000 miles from Ghana to San Antonio to met Krueger. You have to wonder if jet lag was more of a factor than Krueger's punch in this instance. Oh, and by the way, this was De Kabbajar's first and only professional fight!

The other involved Krueger's bout with highly-regarded Pedro Lovell. Terry knocked Pedro cold in the fourth round of their 1973 match making him the only person to put Lovell down for the full count. In a rematch three months later, Lovell scored a first round TKO and gave Krueger a severe beating.

Let me put this in perspective. People do get struck by lightning, you can socre a touchdown with a Hail Mary Pass, and if you buy a ticket you could win millions in the New Jersey Lottery. And in boxing you can score a lucky shot.

The fact of the matter in the first Lovell fight was that Pedro was beating the tar out of Krueger for three rounds. According to coverage of the match in The Ring and BoxRec, in the fourth frame Terry threw a wild haymaker, and Lovell's jaw was in the way.

Outside of beating up a smaller Bobby Rascon, Krueger lost (usually by kayo) to every fighter he faced with a name that you might recognize. He was stopped by Richard Dunn, Rodney Bobick, Jody Ballard, Jeff Shelburg, Sonny Moore, and Larry Frazier, none of whom were very high on the heavyweight food chain during the period. You can also add some lesser known/unknown names like Clarence Boone, Alfredo Mongol Ortiz, Mani Vaka, Frank Howard, and Henry Hall among those who planted the Pill.

So in this regard, I'm in total agreement with the defensive ratings for Krueger in the data pool. It's with the offensive evaluation that I have some strong differences.

Currently the db ratings have Krueger with a CF of 6/6, an HP of 8, and PL/CP at 35/33. Throw in the fact that as a southpaw, Krueger gets a CF boost, his rating makes him much more formidable that he was in reality. Sure he can knockout BoBo Bash just like he did in real life back in 1974. But he has a darn good chance of doing the same to Bobick, Dunn, and all of the rest mentioned above which just didn't happen.

As you'll note, I made substantial changes in my ratings. I took his CF down to 4/4 (remember that the southpaw factor actually gives him a boost here), reduced the HP to 5, and downgraded his PL/CP to 28/28.

These are indeed drastic changes. Nevertheless, I playtested him against a variety of real life opponents with TBCB default ratings and the results were very accurate. In his sequences with Lovell, once he kayoed Pedro in the fourth and was stopped by him many times in the first, as it was in reality.

Here, however, is the critical point. I'm certain that Krueger's default rating was also tested as well. This takes us to the questions raised by Conn Chris with his "Sub-Zero" template ratings.

If I were to look at Krueger's victims in the context that "all zeroes are created equal", the default rating generally gave me an accurate result in testing against 0 rated fighters. There were, however, a goodly amount of inaccurate results using the default against Krueger's opponents who were rated higher.

But as Chris has pointed out, zeroes are not equal in TBCB, and if you look at Krueger's early round knockout opponents, they are the lowest of the low. When testing my rating, Krueger scored quick kayos when he was facing fighters -10 and lower. As he started to move up the food chain among the subzeroes the quick knockouts became far less frequent. In measuring Krueger against Chris's templates, he'd be roughly a -3.

The other question that the Krueger rating raises is the assignment of the HP. One-shot kayos do happen in boxing, and there are fighters who can take a foe out with one shot. But might this be somewhat overstated in rating fighters? Certainly actual fights are different from what takes place when John Garfield enters the ring in Body and Soul.

Generally, when you think of power punchers like Shavers or Foremen, it was a hard setup shot with a few follow ups that put their opponents away. Thus, as we all know the relationship between CF, PL/CP, KI, and HP have a strong symbiosis. At times, I think that we might tend to overlook this and view HP in isolation.

In a broader sense, there are really only two TBCB variables that have numbers attached to them in BoxRec.---knockouts and rounds fought. The TBCB 2.0 Manual provides formulae to convert each into a rating (HP and Endurance, respectively).

When we are attempting to rate fighters who have not received the "ink" that's been enjoyed by the likes of Ali, Tyson, and the rest, I often wonder if we rely too much on the quantitative elements of these formulae at the expense of the qualitiave elements in a fighter's ratings for HP and Endurance.

Once more, my objective here is to examine approaches to rating fighters and to share with my fellow forum members ratings that I've put together for my own use. My justifications are just theories and are no better than those employed by the TBCB rating team or any other person who posts ratings.