My Boxing Pound-For-Pound List After Canelo Alvarez Dominated Charlo

Ever since losing to Dmitry Bivol and looking solid but not spectacular in his next two fights vs. Gennadiy Golovkin and John Ryder, there have been constant questions about whether Canelo Alvarez had begun his career decline and whether Jermell Charlo could take advantage of it and pull off a tremendous upset on Saturday night.

Turns out that Alvarez isn’t quite as washed up as some believed.

Alvarez dominated Charlo on Saturday night, winning a wide unanimous decision and proving once again that he is one of the best boxers in the world. Maybe he’s not No. 1 on my pound-for-pound list anymore. But he’s still pretty darn high.

Before the fight, Alvarez was No. 3 on my list, and Charlo was just a spot or two off it, somewhere in the No. 12 range after beating Brian Castano and winning the undisputed junior middleweight championship in 2022 but then battling injuries for more than year.

Alvarez was about a 5/1 betting favorite to retain his super middleweight championship on Saturday night, and he easily did so, knocking down Charlo with a huge right in the seventh round and landing enough lead left hooks and thudding body shots throughout the matchup to discourage Charlo from fully engaging.

“Nobody can beat this Canelo,” Alvarez said after the fight.

It’s hard to disagree with that. But does that mean he should be re-installed as the No. 1 fighter in the world? Let’s look at my pound-for-pound top-10 list:

1. Terence Crawford: His domination of Errol Spence in July makes this an easy choice.

2. Naoya Inoue: His domination of Steven Fulton in July was utterly impressive, but at this point, his resume doesn’t top Crawford’s.

3. Canelo Alvarez: There likely won’t be much talk in the coming months about how the 33-year-old is on the downside of his career.

4. Oleksandr Usyk: Now that Usyk is set to face Tyson Fury in a few months, he’ll have the biggest challenge of his career. If Usyk wins that, it’s possible we could tap him No. 1 overall.

5. Gervonta Davis: He’s still riding high after his KO victory vs. Ryan Garcia in April. A rematch with Isaac Cruz could be next, but boy, it’d be fun to watch him match up against Vasiliy Lomachenko, who is just outside the top 10 of this list.

6. Errol Spence: After he was knocked out by Crawford, I kind of feel that Spence should be lower on the list than No. 6. But I also don’t think anybody below him should be above him. For now, Spence is just kind of stuck in this spot.

7. Tyson Fury: No matter what happens with Francis Ngannou later this month, Fury won’t be moving up on this list. But if he beats Usyk to become undisputed heavyweight champion, it’d be really hard to keep Fury out of the top-5.

8. Shakur Stevenson: I would have loved to see Stevenson fight Frank Martin next. But Martin declined that opportunity, and instead, Stevenson will meet Edwin De Los Santos in November. Not a bad fight, but it also probably won’t change Stevenson’s position here.

9. Devin Haney: The undisputed lightweight champion is abandoning that division and moving up to junior welterweight, and he’s not messing around at 140 pounds. He’s got Regis Prograis next.

10. Dmitry Bivol: Talk about losing career momentum. After beating Alvarez with ease in April 2022 and then walking through Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez six months later, Bivol hasn’t fought in 2023. A rematch vs. Alvarez never materialized, and Bivol has just been sitting on the sidelines waiting for something to happen.

For what it’s worth, here’s how The Ring’s top-10 list looks, and here’s how ESPN sees it. As of this writing, neither site has updated their lists after the Alvarez-Charlo fight, but before Saturday night, both websites had Alvarez at No. 4. Neither organization had Charlo in their top-10.

Nothing changed on my card on Saturday night, because even with his dominant win, Alvarez can’t yet displace Crawford or Inoue. As for Charlo? Though there has been speculation that Alvarez could end up fighting Terence Crawford sometime soon (it’s something Crawford says he wants), Alvarez said after the fight he didn’t care who he faced next.

Perhaps sensing the opportunity, Charlo said in his postfight interview that HE was the one who wanted Crawford next. If Charlo returned to 154 pounds and ended up beating Crawford, he would rapidly move up my pound-for-pound list.

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