The Most Glaring Flaw for Today's Top Boxing Stars
A boxer rarely reaches the top echelon of the pound-for-pound rankings without a solid, all-around game. At the elite level, most offensive-oriented fighters can still protect themselves and defensive specialists can still cause damage to an opponent.
So finding flaws among the top stars is often a matter of nitpicking. Still, when evaluating and comparing greatness, sometimes nitpicking is called for.
I've selected the fighters discussed here by using The Ring pound-for-pound, top-10 rankings. I don't agree with it entirely, but it is the most widely circulated and recognizable list.
10. Saul Alvarez
1 of 10
Saul Alvarez turned professional at age 15 and has already fought 46 times, despite being just 24, losing only once to pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather. Given the charismatic red head's box-office potential, he's been developed with some degree of care. But I don't think it's accurate to say that he's been overprotected.
Canelo has shown steady improvement while developing at a young age, fighting at a very high level. Still, there is no question that he has struggled with fighters who have excellent movement.
Alvarez is a stalking, pressure fighter who likes to pound on the body and break an opponent down. Fighters like Austin Trout, Floyd Mayweather and Erislandy Lara have made that very tough for him. While he won close fights against Trout and Lara, he was nearly shut out on any credible card against Mayweather.
He has shown improvement in this area, though.
9. Roman Gonzalez
2 of 10
Roman Gonzalez is a perfect 40-0 in his career with 34 knockouts. He's a three-division world champion. He's an offensive-minded fighter to be certain, but his defensive head movement is first rate.
It is very tough for me to say that Gonzalez has any true flaws as a fighter. He's even carried his amazing power up with him while climbing in weight.
If I was going to locate a flaw on Gonzalez, it would be one that is beyond his control: his size. Gonzalez has all the tools to be a true boxing superstar, but fighting at flyweight and below, it's simply been very difficult for him to get the recognition he deserves.
This "flaw" has not held him back in the ring. But it has limited his career.
8. Carl Froch
3 of 10
For a top-rated fighter, Carl Froch is a very sloppy boxer. He throws wide punches, leaving plenty of room to be countered, and frequently squares himself almost completely up when trading with an opponent.
Froch can be outboxed. In his two fights with the relatively green George Groves, Froch lost more rounds than he won, as the younger fighter employed a much better jab and movement.
But Froch's conditioning is legendary and his chin is nearly unmatched, and in prizefighting, those two attributes can make up for a lot of flaws. Froch can hang around and keep coming better than most fighters in the sport.
He also has very good natural balance, which allows him to fight well off from either his back or front foot. His power can turn a fight around and make up for a lot of lost rounds in a hurry.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
7. Guillermo Rigondeaux
4 of 10
In my own rankings, I'd place Guillermo Rigondeaux higher than No. 7, despite the fact that he's had only 14 professional fights. Arguably the greatest amateur ever, the two-time Olympic gold medalist has made a rapid ascension to the top of the sport. When he beat Nonito Donaire in April 2013, Donaire was universally ranked within the pound-for-pound top five.
Rigondeaux's long amateur background has served him well as a professional. He is an expert at controlling range and making sure he is rarely in position to get hit.
Still, the deeply ingrained habits of his amateur career are possibly the biggest flaw in his overall game as a professional. In the amateurs, simply outscoring your opponent wins fights. In the professional ranks, you win by doing a better job of beating the other guy up.
Rigo's lack of professional killer instinct nearly cost him a victory against Ricard Cordoba in 2010, though he escaped with a split decision. He's been untouchable since, but a relentless pressure fighter might pose a risk to his perfect record simply by outworking him.
Rigondeaux does have the power to keep come-forward fighters honest, though, knocking out nine of the 14 men he has beaten. The Cuban's lack of offensive firepower might make him less marketable than he deserves to be, but in terms of his complete skill set, he's a very hard fighter to beat.
6. Juan Manuel Marquez
5 of 10
Juan Manuel Marquez is a brilliant ring general and one of the sport's true technicians. His timing is impeccable, allowing him to beat much quicker opponents to the punch.
To the extent that Marquez has a true flaw, it is his habit of overcommitting with an aggressive counter. On the other hand, this willingness to line up the odds in his favor and then roll the dice is the secret to what makes him great.
But it's a habit that's also landed Marquez on the canvas a surprising number of times for a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Getting dropped in his second fight against Manny Pacquiao was enough to put him on the negative side of a split decision.
Even in his greatest professional moment, his Round 6 KO of Pacquiao in their fourth fight, Marquez's aggression had put him in a bad spot up until the point where he landed his iconic punch to end the fight.
5. Timothy Bradley
6 of 10
Timothy Bradley is an outstanding technical boxer with tremendous physical strength and durability. His gift decision over Manny Pacquiao in June 2012 to one side, there's still a reason why Bradley was undefeated for so long. For most fighters, Bradley is an incredibly difficult matchup.
But what he lacks is true, world-class punching power. His combinations thud and score, but they don't very often threaten to end a fight.
This means Bradley lets a lot of lesser fighters hang around, forcing him to walk a tight rope. It came close to costing him a victory against Ruslan Provodnikov in March 2013.
4. Manny Pacquiao
7 of 10
Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez have had the greatest boxing rivalry of this century, and in a strange way, even their flaws line up perfectly. Whereas Marquez can get into trouble by countering too aggressively, Pacman's worst moments have come when he's overpursued.
This was the case in his worst defeat, his December 2012 KO loss at the hands of Marquez. In a classic war, both men had traded knockdowns, but Pacquiao was clearly pulling ahead as the fight neared the midway point at the end of Round 6.
But rather than protecting his growing lead on the cards, Pacquiao overpursued aggressively and walked into a counter that put him to sleep just as the round was set to end.
Pacquiao's explosive, aggressive style has made him great and ensured his tremendous popularity. But against the right opponent, at least, it is a definite flaw.
3. Wladimir Klitschko
8 of 10
Throughout his career, heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko has been nearly untouchable in the ring. He combines a jolting, battering-ram jab with a sledgehammer straight right.
But he's also been stopped three times, in each case by opponents who did not appear to be close to his level as a fighter. So there is a near-universal agreement that Klitschko's one glaring flaw is obviously his vulnerable chin.
Of course, it's been over a decade since he lost. Under the tutelage of Emanuel Steward, he developed a style that makes him nearly invulnerable to a typical heavyweight's attack.
But at times, Klitschko seems almost unnecessarily cautious, and this has hurt him in the North American box office, even if it hasn't exactly damaged him in the ring. The clinch-fest he put on against Alexander Povetkin last year turned the most anticipated heavyweight fight in years into a snoozer.
I also wonder if that caution might end up costing him at some point. His next opponent, Kubrat Pulev, is nearly his own height and will not be as easy to clinch and lean on as Povetkin was.
It could end up being the case that Klitschko's years of putting safety first in all cases leave him ill-prepared for a fighter who is his physical match.
2. Andre Ward
9 of 10
Andre Ward last fought on November 16 of last year. So in less than a month, the sport's No. 2 pound-for-pound fighter will have been inactive for over a year.
That lack of activity is Ward's greatest flaw. Between 2009 and 2012, he went on a dominant run to rival any fighter in recent years. He completely cleaned out the light heavyweight division and stopped light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson by TKO when Dawson dropped down to challenge him.
But since the pummeling of Dawson, he's fought just once, against undefeated but largely untested Edwin Rodriguez. He hasn't been in the ring since that fight, and it's highly unlikely he'll get back in the ring before the end of this year.
Ward is a great talent, but he's throwing away some of his most productive athletic years. When he does come back, against either middleweight terror Gennady Golovkin or light heavyweight monster Sergey Kovalev, his inactivity could present a serious problem.
1. Floyd Mayweather
10 of 10
In a career that stretches nearly two decades now, Floyd Mayweather has compiled a perfect 47-0 record while winning world titles from super featherweight up to junior middleweight. In each of those divisions, he's been not just a belt-holder, but the obvious top champion.
There are no flawless fighters, but Mayweather has come as close as anybody recently.
He's clearly been unable to carry all his power up to welterweight and light middleweight, and he doesn't throw as many punches as a lot of other fighters in the division. But he seriously mitigates both those "flaws" by being nearly impossible to hit.
It would have been interesting to see Mayweather matched against a large-framed, high-volume puncher like Antonio Margarito or Paul Williams. I think Williams, in particular, would have been a challenge for him.
Like any fan, I'd love to see Mayweather finally face Manny Pacquiao. Even though Mayweather trounced Juan Manuel Marquez and Marquez knocked out Pacquiao, I think Pacquiao matches up much better with Mayweather.
But based on what he's shown in the ring over 47 fights, Mayweather has been able to protect or hide any serious flaws that he has.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
