By Dan Ambrose: Canelo Alvarez came out victorious last Saturday night against an opponent in John Ryder that forced him to fight at full throttle for twelve rounds to win a unanimous decision.
The win for Canelo was his second straight since losing to Dmitry Bivol last May. In Alvarez’s previous fight, he struggled mightily to defeat 40-year-old Gennadiy Golovkin last September, and every bit as bad as he did last weekend against his tune-up opponent Ryder.
It wasn’t the type of effort from Canelo that suggests that he deserves to be elevated from his #5 spot in the Ring Magazine rankings to the #1 position that he’d held in the past.
Ring Magazine pound-for-pound
1. Oleksandr Usyk
2. Naoya Inoue
3. Terence Crawford
4. Errol Spence
5. Canelo Alvarez
6. Dmitry Bivol
7. Vasily Lomachenko
8. Josh Taylor
9. Jermell Charlo
10. Gervonta Davis
This writer feels that Canelo shouldn’t be on the pound-for-pound list, as many more deserving fighters should fill his #5 spot. Fighters like Shakur Stevenson, David Benavidez, Devin Haney, and Artur Beterbiev deserve to be in the #5 position instead of Canelo.
Those guys are all unbeaten with unblemished records, which one can’t say about Canelo with his two defeats and draws.
Canelo didn’t look good enough to move him up. Indeed, you could argue that after Canelo struggled against the 34-year-old Ryder, he should be moved down the pound-for-pound list.
With that kind of effort, boxing fans on social media barked that Canelo didn’t deserve to be in the top 10.
Some boxing fans would say that giving a fighter a high ranking based on their popularity rather than their performances & achievement sends the wrong message and cheapens pound-for-pound lists.
The undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo (59-2-2, 39 KOs) had Ryder (32-6, 18 KOs) dealing with an injured nose from the second round, but he never came close to knocking him out.
Ultimately, the judging crew gave Canelo a wide decision victory, but many believed the fight was 8-4. The scores were 120-107, 118-109, and 118-109.
Canelo rates himself above Dmitry Bivol
“I think I’m better than him — that’s it,” Canelo Alvarez said to ESPN about his fight with Dmitry Bivol last year. “If you see the first five, six rounds, I dominated the fight. But then I got tired because I didn’t train at 100 percent.
“Why should I even do the rematch at 175?” said Bivol about the Canelo rematch. “What is my challenge or motivation if I’ve already beaten him at that weight class? He might have a better chance at 168 because he said that that’s his weight class.”
