Current Boxers Who Have Laid Waste to Their Weight Classes
Cleaning out a weight class is a rare thing in contemporary boxing. Not only are promoters hesitant to match their top stars against the best from other stables, but elite fighters rarely stay in the same division for long.
So holding down a weight class for a decade like Wladimir Klitschko, or cleaning out all the closest competitors like Andre Ward, doesn't happen often anymore.
Even on this list, two of the weight classes I've focused on truly need a unification fight. I generally eschew nostalgia. Progress is mostly a good thing.
But in boxing, there is no doubt at all that the alphabet-soup proliferation of world titles over the past 30 years has created a sad situation where the best fighters in the world have less incentive to fight each other.
7. Cruiserweight: Marco Huck and Yoan Pablo Hernandez
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Cruiserweight gets largely ignored in the United States, which is a shame. Because the 200-pound division is currently full of talent.
It's also badly in need of a unification fight between the two top fighters. Yoan Pablo Hernandez and Marco Huck have both been dominant champions over the past few years. It's time they faced off.
Huck is the WBO champion. He lost by TKO to Steven Cunningham in 2007, early in his career, and his only loss since came by majority decision in 2012, when he jumped up to heavyweight and challenged WBA "regular" champion Alexander Povetkin. Huck captured his cruiserweight title in 2009 and has defended it a dozen times since.
Hernandez won the IBF title from Steve Cunningham in 2011 and beat Cunningham in an immediate rematch. Both Hernandez and Huck are based out of Germany, so this fight should be a major draw in that country, where fans seem to have more ability to appreciate the cruiserweight division.
6. Light Heavyweight: Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson
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Last Saturday in Atlantic City, Sergey Kovalev unified three of the four light heavyweight belts when he shut out Bernard Hopkins on all three cards and combined the ageless wonder's WBA and IBF belts with his own WBO strap.
Kovalev has been a wrecking machine since emerging on the world scene in recent years. Prior to Hopkins taking him the distance, he had stopped nine straight opponents. Throw out a two-round, technical draw and nobody had gone the distance with him since a 2010 six-round fight.
Stevenson, meanwhile is the WBC and lineal champion and arrived at his own place in a similarly dominant fashion. In June 2013, he captured his belt with a stunning Round 1 KO of Chad Dawson.
The perception right now is that Stevenson ducked Kovalev, since he walked away from HBO when a fight with Kovalev could easily have been made. But boxing is a business, so it's rarely so simple as one fighter "ducking" the other.
But now that Kovalev has triangulated Stevenson with three of the four belts, it's time for the Montreal-based champ to return to the negotiating table with the Florida-based Russian. There are two dominant champions right now at 175 pounds.
But there needs to be one.
5. Bantamweight: Shinsuke Yamanaka
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Shinsuke Yamanaka is pretty far off the radar in the United States, but the WBC bantamweight champion from Japan has been a dominant champion for the past two years. After capturing the vacant belt in 2011, he beat Vic Darchinyan, one of the best bantamweight-and-below fighters of the past two decades, in his first defense.
Yamanaka has kept up a busy schedule, defending six more times since then. He knocked out former world champions Malcolm Tunacao and Tomas Rojas in his second and third defenses.
Yamanaka would make for an outstanding matchup with fellow undefeated bantamweight champion and Japanese native Tomoki Kameda. Both fighters are long, talented boxers with good power.
The fight would seem like a natural one to make, but with Kameda focusing heavily on establishing himself in North America, perhaps it won't come to pass.
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4. Light Welterweight: Danny Garcia
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Light welterweight champion Danny Garcia's stock has taken a drop in 2014. Last March, he barely survived Mauricio Herrera by majority decision, and in August, he chose to fight an unranked lightweight Rod Salka rather than a ranked contender in the division where he is the world champion.
Herrera is a crafty boxer, so Garcia shouldn't be criticized too heavily for that performance, but fans have every right to be annoyed at his choice of Salka as an opponent. No boxing fan is subscribing to Showtime for the thrill of watching world champions face no names from lower weight classes.
Still, Garcia deserves credit for what has otherwise been a dominant run at 140 pounds. In 2012, he captured the WBC belt by beating a legend, Erik Morales. He knocked Morales out in the rematch, with one of the prettiest left hooks thrown in recent years.
In between those two fights with Morales, he unified the WBC and WBA belts with a sensational stoppage of Amir Khan. In 2013 he beat former two-division champion Zab Judah in April and handled one of the most dangerous offensive fighters in the sport, Lucas Matthysse, in September.
Considering Matthysse turned in a dominant three-round TKO of IBF champion Lamont Peterson in 2013, Garcia is still by far the top dog at 140. But if he's going to stay there, his next fight needs to be against a top star.
If he doesn't fight Peterson or Viktor Postol, he should at least face Adrien Broner or rematch Matthysse. Garcia is still young and has earned an outstanding reputation in the sport. But if he wants to keep it, he needs to go back to fighting meaningful fights.
3. Super Middleweight: Andre Ward
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This coming weekend will mark a full year of inactivity for Andre Ward. In my own personal notes, once a fighter has been out of action for a full calender year, I no longer consider him an active fighter and drop him from my own rankings.
Still, there is little room for debate when it comes to weighing Ward against the rest of the 168-pound division. He's the top fighter in that class, by a wide margin.
Between 2009 and 2012, Ward beat five world champions. None of the fights was remotely close either.
But since stopping Chad Dawson by Round 10 TKO in September 2012, Ward has fought just once, against the inexperienced Edwin Rodriguez. At 30, he's throwing away what could be his best years with inactivity.
Part of the problem is that Ward needs an opponent who will truly test him and create a sense of drama for the fans, who at this point are in danger of forgetting him.
Ward has been busy calling out middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin. But GGG seems intent on spending a little bit more time unifying his own dominance of 160 pounds.
I think a more logical fight to get Ward back into the ring and the spotlight would be against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Newly crowned, undefeated titlist Anthony Dirrell would also make sense.
2. Heavyweight: Wladimir Klitschko
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This Saturday in Hamburg, Germany, heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko will face No. 1 contender Kubrat Pulev. If he wins, it will be Klitschko's 17th successful defense in a row, placing behind only Joe Louis (25) and Larry Holmes (20) in the entire history of the heavyweight division.
It's been years since Klitschko even had a close fight. In 12 of his 16 defenses, he won by stoppage. In the other four, he only lost a handful of rounds.
Klitschko has never caught on with North American fans, but in Germany and Eastern Europe, he is a rock star. It's fair to point out that he hasn't ruled over a particularly talented generation of heavyweight contenders. But a fighter can only fight the opponents who are available.
Klitschko has never ducked anybody. And he's been nearly as dominant as possible for a decade.
1. Flyweight: Roman Gonzalez
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As a fighter who has competed his entire career in boxing's lowest weight classes, Roman Gonzalez has regrettably flown under the radar for years in the United States. Still, a dominant record like his is impossible to ignore forever.
Gonzalez is finally beginning to emerge as a true international star, after winning world titles in three divisions and compiling a record of 40-0 with 34 KOs. In September he went to Japan and captured the WBC 112-pound strap by stopping Akira Yaegashi by Round 9 TKO in a great fight.
There are quality fighters out there for Gonzalez to face at 112. But I'm not sure how competitive many of them would be against him. Gonzalez already has a victory over the division's other top fighter, Juan Francisco Estrada.
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