By Ken Hissner: When you think of the greatest boxers pound for pound in the history of the sport, it usually is about boxers from the USA like “Sugar” Ray Robinson, Henry “Homicide Hank” Armstrong, Harry “Pittsburgh Windmill” Greb, Sam Langford from Canada fighting out of USA, Joe “The Brown Bomber” Louis, Rocky Marciano so on and so forth.
During more modern times and today, there was Muhammad “The Greatest” Ali, Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran, Julio “J.C.” Cesar Chavez, Sr. Floyd “Money” Mayweather, Jr., Lennox “The Lion” Lewis, Manny “Pac Man” Pacquiao, “Sugar” Ray Leonard, Oscar “Golden Boy” De La Hoya, Felix “Tito” Trinidad, Carlos Monzon, Pernell “Sweet Pea” Whitaker, Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns among others.
In looking at the International Boxing Organization’s list of champions in the IBF, WBA, WBC, and WBO along with the IBO, I found the list of countries from the following:
Heavyweights: Ukraine and United Kingdom
Cruiserweights: France, Australia, United Kingdom, and South Africa
Light Heavyweights: Russia and Kyrgyzstan
Super Middleweights: Mexico
Middleweights: USA and two from Kazakhstan
Super Welterweights: USA
Welterweights: two from USA
Super Lightweights: United Kingdom and Dominican Republic
Lightweights: USA
Super Featherweights: USA and Dominican Republic
Featherweights: Three from Mexico and the United Kingdom
Super Bantamweights: USA and Uzbekistan
Bantamweights: Japan
Super Flyweights: Two from Japan, Puerto Rico, and South Africa
Flyweights: Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine
Light Flyweights: Two from Japan, South Africa, and Puerto Rico
Minimumweights: Two from Thailand, Mexico, and Japan
If you total up the countries, the following shows:
USA 7; Mexico 5; United Kingdom and Japan 4; South Africa, Dominican Republic, Thailand, Ukraine, Kazakhstan 2, Uzbekistan, Puerto Rico, France, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Australia 1
The USA no longer has domination of baseball with players from the Dominican Republic and others from Latino and Spanish countries.
They still dominate basketball, and the greatest soccer player is from Brazil in Pele, a sport the USA has never dominated. Gymnastics can be from Europe and Asian countries.
Though the USA may have more world champions per the list, they have people going to other sports more like basketball and football, etc.
Since this is a boxing website, did you notice we had to go down to middleweight before the USA had a world champion?
The pound-for-pound best fighter today may be a light heavyweight like Dimitry Bivol from Kyrgyzstan or a Russian out of Canada in Artur Beterbiev.
Though not a fan of the heavyweight division myself, here we have one from Ukraine and the other from the United Kingdom. One of the best pound-for-pound boxers is from Japan in Naoya Inoue, the world bantamweight champion.
In recent years it was Gennadiy ‘GGG” Golovkin from Kazakhstan and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez from Mexico, but after seeing them in their third fight some four years too late, you wouldn’t consider either the best.
I look forward to your comments.