Hi Bread, So The Ring made a pretty compelling list, ranking the top 10 fighters of the century so far. The list is going to be longer (25 for 25), but the idea got me thinking. So their top 10 goes as follows: 1. Mayweather 2. Pac 3. Bud 4. Usyk 5. Inoue 6. Chocolatito 7. B-Hop 8. Loma 9. Ward 10. Canelo. I assume these are the final results from the individual lists made by writers, trainers and experts. Then I decided to cross-check those results with The Ring yearly ratings. I know they’re not perfect (the situation in December does not always fairly reflect what happened before), but it’s a useful tool nevertheless. It’s pretty straightforward maths (10 points for the #1 place, 9 for #2, and so on), and the results are: 1. Mayweather (111), 2. Pacquiao (96), 3. Crawford (78), 4. Canelo (70), 5. Inoue (69), 6. Usyk (67), 7. Hopkins (65), 8. Marquez (61), 9. Loma (44), 10. Ward (42).It’s almost the same bunch (Chocolatito drops out, in comes Marquez). Top 3 is the same. Canelo is noticeably higher, too. So, these lists got me thinking – are May & Pac really one and two, or is it more “them good old days” bias? How to rate Canelo? How many current fighters deserve to be on the list? I know overthinking is real, but I looked into the numbers… Well, it all comes down to details. The top 5 guys (May, Pac, Bud, Usyk, Inoue) are ahead of the rest, but it’s really close between them. When we talk about Floyd, we only consider his work from 2001, starting with the Chico fight. So, most of that “Pretty Boy” Floyd work is not there. Still, he won 20 championship fights in five weight classes. …But so did Bud Crawford. The championship numbers are virtually the same (and Bud has 15 KOs to Floyd’s 6). There are some obvious differences, though. For starters, Bud was undisputed in three weight classes, while Floyd never managed that in one. Floyd picked and chose opponents, weight stipulations, and perfect timing; Bud wanted smoke all day every day. Floyd had some debatable wins (for the record, I think he won against Castillo, De La Hoya and Maidana); Bud never had a close fight. In short: Floyd worked the boxing machine; Bud worked against it. I know Floyd fought better names overall, but he was never an underdog in this century. It’s probably already too long at this point (I can go on for ages), so to keep it simple: what’s your top 10 p4p list of this century? Could you give your reasoning for the top 5? Don’t you think that guys like GGG, Klitschko and Kovalev tend to get overlooked as dominant champions in just one weight class?
Subscribe to my channel
