Boxing pound-for-pound rankings: Jesse Rodriguez debuts in Top 10

Every so often, I’ll post my 10 choices for the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. To understand this, it helps to understand what pound-for-pound means. To me, and the way I’ll be voting, it’s who would win a fight if everyone weighed the same and all of their skills and physical attributes were proportional. For example, if I’m considering a flyweight who is a murderous puncher in his division, I will assume he’d be a murderous puncher in every division, punching proportionally as hard at heavyweight as he did at flyweight.

I will value activity and quality of opposition over inactivity and lighter opposition. That said, I will not arbitrarily remove a fighter from my Top 10 if there is a logical and rational reason why he hasn’t fought. But I will not vote for someone who has been inactive for a lengthy period for no apparent reason. Fighters who are under doping suspensions will not be included.

Boxing pound-for-pound rankings as of May 10

1. Terence Crawford (38-0, 29 KOs), WBO welterweight champion. Previous Ranking: 2

2. Naoya Inoue (21-0, 18 KOs), IBF-WBA bantamweight champion. PR: 3

3. Tyson Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs), WBC heavyweight champion. PR: 4

4. Canelo Alvarez (57-2-2, 39 KOs), Undisputed super middleweight champion. PR: 1

5. Errol Spence Jr. (28-0, 22 KOs), IBF-WBA-WBC welterweight champion. PR: 6

6. Shakur Stevenson (18-0, 9 KOs), WBO super featherweight champion. PR: 9

7. Vasiliy Lomachenko (16-2, 11 KOs), lightweight contender. PR: 5

8. Oleksandr Usyk (19-0, 13 KOs), IBF-WBA-WBO heavyweight champion. PR: 8

9. Dmitry Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs), WBA light heavyweight champion. Previously unranked

10. Juan Francisco Estrada (42-3, 28 KOs), WBA-WBC super flyweight champion. PR: 7