Heavyweight titleholder Tyson Fury turned in a special performance in his third fight with Deontay Wilder on Saturday in Las Vegas, stopping the former champ in the 11th round of a classic battle.
Was it enough to lift Fury (No. 8 going into last Saturday) higher on Boxing Junkie’s pound-for-pound list?
Well, the process of making a decision on that was tricky. You have to imagine how Fury might fare against those ahead of him on the list if they were the same size.
Could Fury, with his impressive skill set and grit, defeat Nos. 1-7 Terence Crawford, Canelo Alvarez, Naoya Inoue, Oleksandr Usyk, Errol Spence Jr., Teofimo Lopez and Vasiliy Lomachenko if weight weren’t a factor?
We have our doubts.
At the same time, Fury has had great success at the highest level of the sport, including back-to-back knockouts of arguably the second best heavyweight in the world. He’s proving what he’s made of in the ring, for which he deserves credit.
Thus, we decided to move Fury up one notch on the list — from No. 8 to No. 7, meaning he trades places with Lomachenko (No. 7 previously).
Lomachenko is coming off a ninth-round knockout of Masayoshi Nakatani in June but gave a shaky performance eight months earlier against Lopez, who defeated the Ukrainian star by a unanimous decision.
Here’s how the new list looks:
BOXING JUNKIE
POUND-FOR-POUND
- Terence Crawford – Scheduled to defend his WBO welterweight title against Shawn Porter on Nov. 20 Las Vegas.
- Canelo Alvarez – Scheduled to fight Caleb Plant to unify all four major 168-pound titles on Nov. 6 in Las Vegas.
- Naoya Inoue – No fight scheduled.
- Oleksandr Usyk – Expected to fight Anthony Joshua a second time but no deal is in place.
- Errol Spence Jr. – No fight scheduled.
- Teofimo Lopez – Tentatively scheduled to defend his undisputed lightweight championship against George Kambosos next month but no date has been locked in.
- Tyson Fury – No fight scheduled.
- Vasiliy Lomachenko – Expected to fight Richard Commey on Dec. 11 at Madison Square Garden in New York City but the deal hasn’t be finalized.
- Juan Francisco Estrada – In talks to defend his WBA and WBA junior bantamweight titles in what would be a third fight against Roman Gonzalez in November.
- Gennadiy Golovkin – In talks to fight Ryota Murata in a middleweight title-unification fight on Dec. 28 in Japan.
- Mikey Garcia – Scheduled to fight Sandor Martin on Oct. 16 in Fresno, Calif.
- Jermell Charlo – No fight scheduled.
- Josh Taylor – Scheduled to defend his undisputed junior welterweight championship against mandatory challenger Jack Catterall on Dec. 18 in Glasgow, Scotland.
- Artur Beterbiev – Scheduled to defend his light heavyweight titles against Marcus Browne on Dec. 17 in Montreal.
- Gervonta Davis – Scheduled to face Rolando Romero in a lightweight bout on Dec. 5 in Los Angeles.
Honorable mention (alphabetical order): Mairis Briedis (scheduled to fight Artur Mann on Oct. 16 in Riga, Latvia), Jermall Charlo (no fight scheduled), Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (Sor Rungvisai is expected to meet Carlos Cuadras as part of a junior bantamweight tournament but nothing is official), Yordenis Ugas (no fight scheduled) and Oscar Valdez (no fight scheduled).
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