- Canelo Alvarez
- Osley Iglesias
- Christian Mbilli
- Lester Martinez
- Diego Pacheco
- Jose Armando Resendiz
- Caleb Plant
- Hamzah Sheeraz
- Jacob Bank
- Bektemir Melikuziev
“You have to look at the whole body of work. One loss doesn’t knock you down,” Max Kellerman told the InsideRingShow, defending why The Ring didn’t drop Canelo Alvarez from the #1 spot after his loss to Terence Crawford last September.
While I get the “body of work” argument, rankings are usually meant to reflect who is the best fighter in the division at the moment. If Canelo didn’t look like a #1 or even a #2 in his loss to Crawford, keeping him at the top is starting to feel more like a lifetime achievement award than a sports ranking.
Canelo’s “body of work” at 168 comes down to wins over many contenders who were not considered special. If we’re going to keep Alvarez at #1 because of his past super middleweight wins, it’s a big stretch that his best wins came against these fighters: William Scull, Jaime Munguia, Edgar Berlanga, Jermell Charlo, Callum Smith and Gennadiy Golovkin. GGG was at the end of his career when he fought Canelo at 168 in their trilogy match.
“The way they used to do it. If the champion lost, a lot of times they wouldn’t be ranked #1 because there were a lot of guys waiting for a title shot. So, they’d be dropped to 2, 3 or 4 to give the top guys who were waiting a chance to get to the title. You can drop Canelo, but look at super-middles.
When you look at the names below him, there’s a real sense of stagnation: Guys like Christian Mbilli and Osleys Iglesias are destroying everyone before them. Sticking them behind a fighter coming off a loss can make the rankings feel “clogged”.
Much of Canelo’s “body of work” involves beating guys who have moved up from 154 or 160 (like Charlo or an older GGG). If he’s not dominant against a peer at 168, the No. 1 spot feels more like a marketing tool than a merit-based position.
