Heavyweight champ Tyson Fury gave the most spectacular performance of his career this past Saturday in London, stopping Dillian Whyte with a booming upper cut in the sixth round.
In the process, he retained his title and bolstered his position as the top big man of his era.
But was it enough to bump our No. 6 fighter pound-for-pound higher on the list?
No.
One, as impressive as Fury’s victory was, we had to take Whyte’s limitations into consideration when we assess the winner’s performance. Bottom line: Defeating Whyte isn’t a great achievement.
And, two, we had to look at the fighters ahead of Fury on the list: No. 1 Terence Crawford, No. 2 Canelo Alvarez, No. 3 Naoya Inoue, No. 4. Oleksandr Usyk and No. 5 Errol Spence Jr.
We couldn’t find justification for Fury to overtake the top three or Usyk and Spence, who are coming off impressive victories over Anthony Joshua and Yordenis Ugas. Joshua and Ugas are better fighters than Whyte.
Thus, Fury, our top heavyweight, remains at No. 6 for now. Of course, that could change if he gets a shot at Usyk, who is expected to face Joshua in a rematch this summer.
Next up on the pound-for-pound list: Honorable Mention Shakur Stevenson, who faces Oscar Valdez in a 130-pound title-unification bout this Saturday in las Vegas (ESPN, ESPN+).
Also, we took this opportunity to acknowledge that Stevenson was inadvertently removed from the list recently. As a result, we ended up with six fighters with legitimate claims on five Honorable Mention positions.
We finally settled on the five Honorable Mentions you see below.
Here is what the list looks like at the moment:
BOXING JUNKIE
POUND-FOR-POUND
- Terence Crawford – No fight scheduled.
- Canelo Alvarez– Scheduled to challenge WBA light heavyweight titleholder Dmitry Bivol on May 7.
- Naoya Inoue – Scheduled to face Nonito Donaire in a bantamweight title-unification rematch on June 7 in Japan.
- Oleksandr Usyk – In talks to defend his heavyweight titles against Anthony Joshua in a rematch.
- Errol Spence Jr. – No fight scheduled.
- Tyson Fury– No fight scheduled.
- Vasiliy Lomachenko – Career on hold because of the war in Ukraine.
- Juan Francisco Estrada – In talks to defend his WBC junior bantamweight title against Joshua Franco.
- Gennadiy Golovkin – No fight scheduled but expected to face Canelo Alvarez a third time in September.
- Jermell Charlo – Scheduled to face Brian Castano for the undisputed junior middleweight championship on May 14 in Carson, California.
- Artur Beterbiev – In talks to face Joe Smith Jr. in a light heavyweight title-unification fight on June 18 in New York.
- Gervonta Davis – Scheduled to face Rolando Romero on May 28 in Brookly, New York.
- Jermall Charlo – Scheduled to defend his middleweight title against Maciej Sulecki on June 18 in Houston.
- Kazuto Ioka – The WBO has ordered a rematch between Ioka and Donnie Nietes for Ioka’s junior bantamweight belt but no deal is in place.
- Josh Taylor – No fight scheduled.
Honorable mention (alphabetical order): Mairis Briedis (no fight scheduled); Nonito Donaire (scheduled to face Naoya Inoue on June 7); Roman Gonzalez (no fight scheduled); George Kambosos (scheduled to defend his lightweight titles against Devin Haney on June 5); Shakur Stevenson (scheduled to fight Oscar Valdez on April 30).