A very active week in the women’s boxing front produced a series of changes in our ratings.

The most notable one is Ellie Scotney’s jump from No. 5 to No. 3 at junior featherweight after her win over No. 4 Cherneka Johnson over the weekend.

“Ellie Scotney showed great skills and ring generalship in keeping Cherneka Johnson off her game and unable to mount the kind of defense we expected,” said historian Malissa Smith, adding that “Scotney is a real talent with determination and grit as a champion” before justifying her positive vote, with columnist Mark Jones agreeing by saying that “both fighters were in superb physical condition, and the fight was consummated at a high level.”
“It was a difficult fight for her and once again she proved to be capable and have the necessary tools to solve situations in the ring,” said book author and TV commentator Yesica Palmetta about Scotney, while Beautiful Brawler’s Lupi Gutierrez-Beagle said that “Scotney, with the persistence of a pit bull, definitely should be above ‘Sugar Neeks’.”
Also at 122, Maureen Shea’s inactivity at that weight will be in review next week along with several other fighters. As we have stated earlier in our series, we expanded our one-year inactivity policy during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to allow fighters who were affected by travel and training restrictions to get their careers back in track, but we are now back on our regular schedule and will be reexamining some of our ratings very soon.

One change that we were able to spot earlier on is Kali Reis’ inactivity at junior welterweight. After a vote, it was decided that Reis will be dropped and Greece’s Christina Linardatou will occupy the No. 5 spot in the 140-pound ratings, with everyone else moving up one spot.

Diego M. Morilla writes for The Ring since 2013. He has also written for HBO.com, ESPN.com and many other magazines, websites, newspapers and outlets since 1993. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and an elector for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He has won two first-place awards in the BWAA’s annual writing contest, and he is the moderator of The Ring’s Women’s Ratings Panel. He served as copy editor for the second era of The Ring en Español (2018-2020) and is currently a writer and editor for RingTV.com.

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