For the last few years the pound for pound picture has largely gone unchanged. Some fighters have come and gone, others moved around, but it has largely been a list enjoyed by a few. Klitschko, Mayweather Pacquiao, Marquez, Cotto, Ward and some others have sat there for years unchanging. The point of this article is to gauge who will be there once all of those names are gone.
Just as we saw Kelly Pavlik, Shane Mosley and Antonio Margarito hang up the gloves not that long ago, we will see the same thing for the current crop of stars before long, and that will leave spaces for new faces to emerge.
Lets imagine Mayweather, Klitschko, Marquez, Martinez, Pacquiao, Froch and Cotto have retired from the sport. Who would that leave? We would still have Andre Ward and unless he has some problems related to ring rust, which cause him an upset loss, it would likely leave him at the top of the pile. Next we would have triple G. This is the man making a huge splash in the boxing world right now with constant KO wins over numerous top 10 fighters in the middleweight division. He is no spring chicken but is on such a role that surely he will be rated highly. Plus he is showing no signs of slowing down and actually it feels as though still has the best to come.
To determine spots 3-10 it likely depends on what fights get made in the next 24 months and who comes out on top. For example if Thurman vs Khan gets made only one will make the list, the same case for Kovalev vs Stevenson. For now I will add them based on current performances, but it could be drastically different moving forward, that’s what makes an exercise like this so interesting. The amount of potential matchups are astounding as the levels of talent today are better than they have been for a while.
1. Andre Ward
2. Gennady Golovkin
3. Guillermo Rigondeaux
4. Sergey Kovalev
5. Danny Garcia
6. Kell Brook
7. Keith Thuman
8. Adonis Stevenson
9. Nicholas Walters
10. Saul Alvarez
11. (just missing out) Lucas Matthysse/Marcos Maidana/Roman Gonzalez
We could also see entrances appearing which are a little more of a surprise. These would include Amir Khan, Peter Quillin, Tyson Fury/Deontay Wilder, Takashi Uchiyama, Timothy Bradley, Jean Pascal, Carl Frampton, Scott Quigg, Jessie Vargas, Leo Santa Cruz, Demetrius Andrade or Adrien Broner