Super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez’s pay-per-view defense against Jermell Charlo on Saturday in Las Vegas might shake up Boxing Junkie’s pound-for-pound rankings.
And it might not.
The Top 15 list (plus five Honorable Mentions) will probably remain static if No. 7 Alvarez wins convincingly. After all, No. 8 Charlo, about a 3½-1 underdog, is moving up two weight classes to challenge the future Hall of Famer.
However, if Alvarez loses or even struggles to eke out a victory, our rankings could look considerably different.
Alvarez dropped from No. 2 to No. 7 after he lost a clear decision to 175-pound champion Dmitry Bivol in May of last year, which was followed by so-so outings against Gennadiy Golovkin and John Ryder. A poor performance against Charlo could knock him out of Top 10 for the first time in many years.
Meanwhile, Charlo certainly would climb the list if he has his hand raised. He would end up no lower than No. 7 and could climb higher than that, depending upon the nature of his victory.
Here’s what the list looks like at the moment:
BOXING JUNKIE
POUND-FOR-POUND
- Terence Crawford – No fight scheduled.
- Naoya Inoue – No fight scheduled.
- Oleksandr Usyk – No fight scheduled.
- Dmitry Bivol – No fight scheduled.
- Tyson Fury – Scheduled to face MMA star Francis Ngannou in a boxing match on Oct. 28 in Saudi Arabia.
- Juan Francisco Estrada – Reportedly in talks with Honorable Mention Kazuto Ioka for a title-unification New Year’s Eve bout in Japan.
- Canelo Alvarez– Scheduled to defend his 168-pound titles against Jermell Charlo on Sept. 30.
- Jermell Charlo – Scheduled to challenge 168-pound champion Canelo Alvarez on Sept. 30.
- Gervonta Davis – No fight scheduled.
- Errol Spence Jr. – No fight scheduled.
- Vasiliy Lomachenko – No fight scheduled.
- Artur Beterbiev – Scheduled to defend his 175-pound titles against Callum Smit on Jan. 13 in Quebec City, Canada.
- Shakur Stevenson – No fight scheduled.
- Roman Gonzalez – No fight scheduled.
- Devin Haney – 135-pound champion reportedly near a deal to challenge 140-pound titleholder Regis Prograis this fall.
Honorable mention (alphabetical order): David Benavidez (no fight scheduled); Jermall Charlo (no fight scheduled); Sunny Edwards (scheduled to face Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez in a 112-pound title-unification bout on Dec. 16); Kazuto Ioka (reportedly in talks with No. 6 Juan Francisco Estrada for a title-unification New Year’s Eve bout in Japan); Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez (scheduled to face Sunny Edwards in a 112-pound title-unification bout on Dec. 16).
