If two heads are better than one, then it should logically follow that five heads are better than two. (Exactly how former welterweight belt holder Andrew “Six Heads” Lewis fits into this hierarchy is a topic for another time.)
So: You know what’s more compelling than a two-way debate over who is the best fighter in the world, pound-for-pound?
A five-way debate over who is the best fighter in the world, pound-for-pound.
And if anyone tells you there are only two boxers to choose from right now for that No. 1 P4P spot, that it’s a decision between Door A and Door B, you can let them know they’re wrong. There’s also Door C, Door D and Door E, with someone who may in fact be the best fighter on the planet at this particular moment standing behind any of those doors.
Since Terence Crawford announced his retirement at the end of last year, the question of who is the pound-for-pound king has been framed almost everywhere you look as having only two possible answers: Oleksandr Usyk and Naoya Inoue.
And the hivemind’s arrival at that binary conclusion is entirely understandable. Usyk and Inoue are the two all-time greats who were in the three-way debate with Crawford the last couple of years. They’re both undefeated multi-division lineal champs who have taken on most of the best competition available without ever slipping up.
I am not knocking the case for either man. In fact, when I submitted my pound-for-pound list to ESPN last weekend, I had Inoue on top – after previously having Usyk on top.
So I am guilty of making the very decisions I appear to be arguing against.
Except I’m not actually arguing against either of them.
I’m just saying that if you don’t also recognize the case for ranking Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, Shakur Stevenson or David Benavidez in the No. 1 position, you’re being too closed-minded about this.
At the moment, any of those five fighters – Inoue, Usyk, Rodriguez, Stevenson or Benavidez – might reasonably be perceived as the best fighter in the world.
The pound-for-pound list is a snapshot in time that, like my mom with a camera back in the Polaroid days, struggles to center its subjects and is sure to cut off the people on the end. It always runs slightly behind the times because the folks compiling the lists or voting on the lists need to have seen the boxers prove their greatness, whereas in retrospect, we can identify where and when greatness was underappreciated.
Floyd Mayweather Jnr first reached No. 1 on Ring Magazine's pound-for-pound list in the summer of 2005 – four and a half years after he dominated Diego Corrales. We had to wait for the likes of Roy Jones Jnr and Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley and Felix Trinidad to lose, but Mayweather was likely the best of them already by 2001 or 2002, when Jones was 32 or 33 and past his absolute peak.
Crawford was never No. 1 on ESPN’s list until he beat Errol Spence in 2023 – when “Bud” was already 35 years old. Knowing what we know now, there’s a real possibility Crawford was the best fighter alive for an entire decade, from 2015 or so through 2025.
It would have perceived as lunacy to rank Crawford above Mayweather in 2015, when the former was beating Thomas Dulorme and Dierry Jean and the latter was clinching his claim to rulership over his era by outpointing Manny Pacquiao. But in hindsight, Crawford was probably slightly superior to an aging Floyd in that moment, right?
Or at least you can now make the case that he was – which is the whole point of this column. That you can make the case.
Usyk is 39 years old. Inoue is 33.
Benavidez is 29, Stevenson is 28 and Rodriguez is 26.
The latter three, one can reasonably assert, are in their absolute primes right now. Usyk and Inoue are not.
Which isn’t to say slightly post-prime Inoue isn’t a greater fighter right at this moment than Benavidez, Stevenson or Rodriguez are – or than any of that trio ever will be. But if you’ve watched all of his fights and paid attention, you know that the Inoue who got dropped by Luis Nery and Ramon Cardenas, and who had to finish strongly to ensure victory over Junto Nakatani is some tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent physically diminished from where he was back when he didn’t have quite as deep a resume.
Usyk hasn’t shown any of those same small signs of slippage. For goodness sake, the man’s past six fights have been two wins apiece over Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois, and he sure didn’t look like he was slowing down as he obliterated Dubois in five rounds last July.
But he’s closing in on his 40th birthday, hasn’t fought in 10 months and is about to take an unserious fight against Rico Verhoeven. Maybe he’s still at his absolute peak, but, logically, he shouldn’t be.
You certainly can’t penalize Usyk in pound-for-pound rankings because he’s older and your gut is telling you it’s going to start impacting his performances soon. That’s some serious "Minority Report" arresting-people-for-crimes-they-haven’t-committed-yet business.
But it’s fair to wonder: Is one of those exceptional fighters in his 20s better than Usyk right at this moment?
Some people like to describe the concept of a pound-for-pound ranking using the hypothetical of “Who would win if every boxer in the world was the same size?”
If you do indeed think of it that way, have fun picking winners in the 10 possible matchup permutations between these five combatants. Every single one is an unanswerable riddle.
But the fact is that pound-for-pound is not just about accomplishment and resume. We certainly use those as factors to help us make measurements, but it’s really supposed to about the “eye test” – who is the most gifted, the most skilled, the most capable right now, as best we can tell.
Divisional rankings are different. Those serve a practical purpose and are to be based on what a fighter has actually done in the ring.
So, for example, while there are no easy answers to the question of who’s better, pound-for-pound, between Jaron “Boots” Ennis and Vergil Ortiz Jnr, there are easy answers to who should be ranked higher at junior middleweight. Ennis has fought in the division only once, beating relative non-entity Uisma Lima. In Ortiz’s 154lbs campaign, he has turned away Serhii Bohachuk, Israil Madrimov and Erickson Lubin.
If you’re compiling fair, merit-based division rankings, it’s Ortiz over Ennis all day every day, probably with several other junior middleweights ranked in between them.
But pound-for-pound is not supposed to be so dictated by resume. Opinion and personal perception should help shape each individual’s P4P list.
And I believe it is entirely fair for anyone to step back and, using their personal perception, say, “Rodriguez is the best fighter on planet Earth right now,” “Benavidez is the best fighter on planet Earth right now” or “Stevenson is the best fighter on planet Earth right now.”
Southpaw Stevenson is as skilled a technician as there is in the game, to the point that he is frequently likened to former pound-for-pound king Pernell Whitaker and nobody gets too hot and bothered over the comp. Stevenson doesn’t score many early finishes, and he may bore fight fans sometimes into making their own early finishes, but you don’t have to be entertaining to top the P4P list. You just have to be better than everybody else.
And given how Stevenson won almost every second of every round against a borderline pound-for-pound-list boxer in Teofimo Lopez Jnr last time out, Shakur may indeed be that guy.
Benavidez may also be that guy, but through an entirely opposite style. “The Mexican Monster” is relentless. He’s overwhelming. He has decent defense, but you could absolutely apply to him the cliché about his offense being his defense. He annihilated Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez last weekend in his first fight in a new weight class a full 25 pounds above his natural division.
That mental exercise where you hypothesize about fighters across the weight spectrum all magically being the same size? With Benavidez, it’s a little less hypothetical. We’ve seen him go from super middle to light heavy and now all the way to cruiser, pound-for-pound-ing whoever’s in front of him.
Then there’s Bam, located somewhere in between the two poles stylistically. He’s not quite as skilled and slick as Stevenson. But, a southpaw himself, he’s not so terribly far off, either. He’s not quite as intimidating offensively as Benavidez. But, a Mexican-American warrior himself, he’s not so terribly far off, either.
Rodriguez is the ultimate boxer-puncher, with exceptional footwork and well-honed instincts for when to sit back and when to attack.
Boxing fans may look back in 2036 and marvel at how obvious it should have been that one of these five fighters was the best in the business in the spring of 2026. Looking at all five of them in the present day, though, with the information we have, it’s not at all obvious.
There are two comfortable choices and there are three speculative choices. But there are five perfectly reasonable choices.
We are fortunate, of course, to be watching the sport at a time when there’s this much talent at the top. And the frustration of not knowing for sure right now who is the rightful pound-for-pound king is more than compensated for by the joy ahead of finding out.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
