By Dan Ambrose: Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield says he personally rates IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) as the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter in boxing rather than WBC flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez, who Ring Magazine has as their No.1 P4P pounder.
“In boxing should not be afraid of no one, to be the best should fight the best,” said Holyfield via ESPN Deportes. “So I think GGG is the best pound for pound fighter in the world right now. He is the only middleweight that does not avoid anyone, whether you ask tells you ok, let’s do it,” Holyfield.
It makes a lot of sense to have Golovkin as the No 1. guy because he’s dominating the middleweight division in a much better way than Roman Gonzalez is at flyweight. Gonzalez took plenty of punches in his recent fight against Brian Viloria, and was hurt by him at one point in the fight. I respect Holyfield’s opinion more than a magazine that picks the No.1 pound-for-pound rankings.
Unfortunately for Golovkin, he’s in a situation where he can’t get the top guys in the 160lb division to fight him right now. He’d like nothing better than to face Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto, Andy Lee, Peter Quillin and Daniel Jacobs, but getting those guys to fight him has proven to be pretty much impossible, as those fighters aren’t eager to get inside the ring with Golovkin.
I don’t think that’s going to change. So instead of penalizing Golovkin for failing to fight the best, you have to automatically insert him as No.1 in the P4P list because of all the top fighters wanting no part of facing him. When you become avoided the way that Golovkin has, you are automatically the top fighter in that division. But in Golovkin’s case, he’s so utterly dominant that you have to put him as No.1 in the pound for pound.
We’ve seen other fighters avoided like the plague through the years. Rigondeaux is one of them, and it’s unfortunate. If this were another sport like the NFL, fighters would be forced to face the likes of Golovkin and Rigondeaux in order to get to the Super Bowl, but in boxing, fighters can avoid the best by steering around them to either pick up paper titles or fight other top fighters without titles being on the line.
Ring Magazine has the following fighters ranked in their top 10 pound for pound rankings:
1. Roman Gonzalez
2. Sergey Kovalev
3. Gennady Golovkin
4. Andre Ward
5. Guillermo Rigondeaux
6. Wladimir Klitschko
7. Terence Crawford
8. Manny Pacquiao
9. Shinsuke Yamanaka
10. Kell Brook
The rankings for pound for pound are subjective ones that are based on people’s perceptions, and biases. I don’t rate guys like Gonzalez, Crawford, Pacquiao, Klitschko and Yamanaka in the correct places in the Ring Magazine’s pound for pound rankings.
Here are my P4P rankings:
1. Gennady Golovkin
2. Guillermo Rigondeaux
3. Andre Ward
4. Sergey Kovalev
5. Miguel Cotto
6. Floyd Mayweather Jr
7. Viktor Postol
8. Orlando Salido
9. Adonis Stevenson
10. Jermall Charlo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hql7hKHmutk
I think my list is better than Ring Magazine’s list by a long shot.
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