Ranking the 10 Best Trash Talkers in Boxing Today
Trash talk is synonymous with boxing in the same way as the uppercut or the left hook.
It's ingrained in the DNA of the sport, and some fighters are just really, really good at it.
Here we take a look at the 10 fighters we have judged as the best at dropping verbal fisticuffs before, during or after fights.
Some are here because they're funny.
Others because they speak the truth.
One or two because they've really upped their game recently.
But all are here because they can get into your head and do some damage before the fists ever start flying.
These are one person's opinion on the 10 best trash talkers in boxing today.
Feel free to add your own in the comments section.
10. Deontay Wilder
1 of 10
You can understand Deontay Wilder’s confidence.
Of the 32 unfortunate souls that have stepped through the ropes to face him, can you guess the number that were still standing to hear the final bell?
Zero.
Not one.
Wilder has knocked out every man he’s faced, with 18 coming in the first round and none surviving past the fourth, so it’s easy to understand why he’d be confident in his punching abilities.
The Tuscaloosa, Alabama, native will get his sternest test and biggest opportunity on Jan. 17 when he faces Bermane Stiverne for the WBC Heavyweight Championship in Las Vegas.
What do you think he’s predicting for that one?
Wilder told Lem Satterfield in December:
"It’s gonna be a knockout, man. This is going to be a knockout. I predict a second round knockout but I guarantee that it’s not going past four. I guarantee you that. There’s a lot of bad blood between us. The thing about it is that I’m the most dangerous when I have something personal against you. Now I really want to hurt you
"
When a guy as big and strong as Wilder makes those sorts of comments, you’d do well to take them seriously.
And that’s just some tip-of-the-iceberg type stuff from the usually jovial Wilder.
But, again, guys that big can say whatever they want, but backing it up?
Deontay will have his chance on Saturday night.
9. Guillermo Rigondeaux
2 of 10
Guillermo Rigondeaux doesn’t have the luxuries afforded to many fighters.
What does that mean?
The 34-year-old unified super bantamweight champion is easily one of the most purely talented boxers on the planet—perhaps the best—but he’s relegated to traveling the world in pursuit of second- and third-tier opponents willing to fight him.
His style has turned off the major American cable networks, and fellow champions at and around his weight are forced to make a careful cost-benefit analysis about whether or not to fight him.
Rigo has been calling out fellow 122-pound titlist Leo Santa Cruz for seemingly an eternity now, and it seems that he’s taken a page out of his compatriot Erislandy Lara’s book.
Responding to Santa Cruz’s comments that he’d love the fight, Rigondeaux had this to say, per Satterfield:.
"I would love to fight Leo Santa Cruz on Jan. 17, but he is scared to fight me.
He knows I am fighting Dec. 31, so he thought he would get away with calling me out. I am a professional at the top of my game and I am always ready to fight. Lets do it, Leo Santa Cruz.
"
Mind you, Rigo was talking about stepping in there with Santa Cruz just a little over two weeks after his most recent fight, a stoppage of Japan’s Hisashi Amagasa on New Year’s Eve. He says that the short turnaround wouldn’t bother him, even for such a significant fight, given Santa Cruz was still opponent-shopping at that point.
The Mexican champion’s team eventually settled on little-known and unheralded Jesus Ruiz for the opportunity, something that, of course, didn’t sit well with Rigondeaux.
“Santa Cruz is a joke. I will not attend the show,” said Rigondeaux, per Satterfield.
“I have no interest in watching him fighting another soft opponent.”
Remember how Lara was able to goad Canelo Alvarez into a fight most thought he wouldn’t take?
Maybe that’s Rigo’s play here too.
8. Canelo Alvarez
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Mexican sensation Saul "Canelo" Alvarez doesn't always talk trash, but when he does, he makes it count.
The 24-year-old former world champion has been engaged in protracted negotiations for a huge Cinco de Mayo fight with reigning middleweight king and Puerto Rican legend Miguel Cotto.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya announced that Canelo had agreed to terms for the fight in early December, but the Cotto camp has been mum on the issue beyond statements that the future Hall of Famer is weighing his options.
Canelo, in an entertaining but likely fruitless move, recently took his case to the court of public opinion, emphasizing the national and familial pride at stake in the potential superfight.
Alvarez said, per Satterfield:
"If he doesn’t take this fight, he will pass down in history unlike anybody else if he were to duck a fighter who defeated his brother. Miguel Cotto has to decide whether or not he wants to fight me. I’m not going to wait much longer. I’ll let him make his decision. Hopefully, his decision won’t hurt his country and all of the fans that want this fight
A Puerto Rican never ducked a Mexican fighter. Nor did a Mexican ever duck a Puerto Rican fighter.
"
Strong words.
Canelo is, of course, referencing his knockout victory of Cotto's older brother Jose Miguel in 2010. Family and national pride are two things that have always been important to Alvarez, who avenged Austin Trout's defeat of his brother Rigoberto in 2013, even if they're not likely to force Cotto into the ring any faster.
That doesn't make it any less entertaining, and you can be sure Cotto will remember it, if and when the two share a ring.
He's all business outside but a ferocious warrior inside.
So Canelo might end up eating those words.
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7. Abel Sanchez
4 of 10
Abel Sanchez does a tremendous job of selling his main main, WBA middleweight champion and knockout-artist extraordinaire Gennady Golovkin.
GGG has stopped his last 18 foes inside the distance, most in quick and brutal fashion, developing a reputation as the most feared puncher in the entire sport.
That reputation has been good for GGG when it comes to drumming up fan and network interest, but not so much when it comes to securing high-profile names for fights.
Cotto's legal adviser, Gaby Penagaricano, in comments to Satterfield, pointed out that while a Golovkin fight has some merit, the Puerto Rican legend is pursuing bigger fights at this time and would possibly revisit GGG down the road.
You can read that how you choose.
Sanchez, who trains Golovkin, has been completely unambiguous in his feelings, per Satterfield:
"Miguel Cotto couldn’t go five rounds, and Freddie Roach knows that and Miguel Cotto knows that,” said Sanchez. “Freddie gets on a rant like that and goes over the top to deflect the real questions so that he doesn’t have to give true answers. But Freddie knows the truth."
Sanchez was responding to comments from Roach that Cotto would kick Golovkin's posterior, and he's also been critical of Peter Quillin, among others, for not wanting to face his fighter.
It's probably a good thing that GGG has Sanchez around to do the smack-talking.
The Kazakh bomber's English is still a little rough, and, while a vicious, stalking knockout machine in the ring, outside of it he's very humble and soft spoken.
6. Adrien Broner
5 of 10
Adrien Broner doesn’t do humble.
“I’m still the chosen one. I’m the one that’s supposed to take over the game after [Floyd] Mayweather and [Manny] Pacquiao retire,” a not-so-humbled-by-his-first-defeat Broner told Bleacher Report prior to his fight with Emmanuel Taylor in September.
“I don’t care what he [Taylor] does. He better come into the ring with a fully loaded magazine and two AK’s. I ain’t playing with him. It’s going to be a fun night for me, man. He’s gonna catch a beating.”
That’s just Broner being Broner.
He’s brash, flashy and in your face, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.
The three-division world champion recently called out Marcos Maidana for a welterweight rematch in the coming year, also setting his sights on Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao.
In trademark Broner style, per Fox Deportes (h/t Luke Furman), he did it with some choice language.
“Chino [Maidana] or Pacman [Pacquiao], sign a contract to fight me. I tasted defeat once but I won't lose again. Come fight me p*******. Anybody can get it."
What you see is what you get.
And we, mercifully, didn’t even mention the “can man” stuff.
Maybe next time.
5. Floyd Mayweather
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The pound-for-pound king is also one of the sport’s great trash talkers.
One of the things that sets Floyd Mayweather apart from many others on this list is his ability to turn things on before a fight and off immediately after it ends.
So much of his villainous “Money” persona is a cleverly constructed marketing scheme designed to develop love and hate with fans and sell pay-per-views. But that’s a slight digression.
Mayweather isn’t afraid to beat the war drums before a fight to get under an opponent’s skin.
His epic, and most certainly NSFW rants, toward Oscar De La Hoya in the lead-up to their record-setting fight are still the thing of legend. Sure, the language was vulgar at times, and Floyd has changed quite a bit since, but if you ever wanted to know why these guys still don’t like each other…
Calling your opponent a certain vulgar term for a part of the female anatomy at every turn is certainly a way to build some animosity.
More recently, and with less venom, Mayweather took an interview with Showtime’s Steve Farhood as an opportunity to criticize longtime rival Pacquiao:
“Now he's in a very, very tight situation. He's lost to Marquez, he's lost to Bradley. Pay-per-view numbers are extremely low. He's desperate. I wanted that fight a long time ago. I'm just waiting on them,” Mayweather said on the Showtime broadcast.
See the difference?
Trash talk, but of the more refined kind.
Less exciting, yes, but better fit for public consumption.
4. Paulie Malignaggi
7 of 10
Speaking of brash and doesn’t care.
Paulie Malignaggi is Brooklyn from his head on down to his toes, and that definitely includes his mouth.
The then-welterweight champion engaged in an epic, oftentimes vulgar and way-over-the-line smack-talk fest with Broner prior to their June 2013 fight at the Barclays Center.
Some of this stuff, from both guys, was plain ugly, involving personal matters such as ex-girlfriends, or girls who thought they were girlfriends, or who the heck really knows.
Let’s focus on just the boxing stuff.
Prior to the fight, Malignaggi had this to say about Broner, per Anson Wainwright:
"There's an Adrien Broner in every urban gym in the United States. A guy like that exists everywhere. I see them all the time. A lot of them don't have the help Adrien Broner has. Adrien Broner is there because of (manager) Al Haymon. Adrien Broner's not there because Adrien Broner's that good. He's there because Al Haymon has pulled his career and right now in the United States (Haymon is) the guy that you have to be with to be ahead, so it's a bit of a mirage. It's a bit of an illusion and you'll see what I'm talking about.
"
Broner narrowly won the fight, but he hasn't looked impressive since. So you can make your own judgments about the validity of the Magic Man's criticism.
Malignaggi’s ire isn’t reserved just for opponents, but also those who refuse to give him credit and dismiss his accomplishments. He told Bleacher Report in April that he’s no longer going to pull punches when it comes to critics.
“What’s the use in proving an idiot wrong to begin with? The fact that you continue to prove idiots wrong means that they’re just idiots. There’s no satisfaction in proving to an idiot that he’s an idiot if you already know he’s an idiot.”
That’s Paulie for you, and you know what?
It’s not like he’s wrong.
3. Tyson Fury
8 of 10
Tyson Fury is a very large man, so he can pretty much say whatever he likes.
And he often does just that, even when you wish he didn’t.
Fury operated under a self-imposed ban from talking during the hype for his rematch victory over Dereck Chisora in November, forcing a stoppage to become heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s mandatory contender for the WBO title.
If you want to take a look at some of Fury’s more NSFW comments on the state of heavyweight boxing and his past, present and possible future opponents, you can do so right here.
Fury has been outspoken in recent weeks about his belief that a Klitschko fight, despite being the mandatory, will never happen. He accused the champ, per Matt McGeehan of The Independent:
"I'm a million per cent convinced this fight ain't going to happen.
I don't think Wladimir will fight me. If he does it's a miracle.
I don't care what the promoters say, I've looked in his eyes and I saw fear. I know he's not going to fight me.
If it does happen he'll get knocked out after seven, eight rounds, after being involved in a bit of a brawl.
"
Some call it confidence, others cockiness, but that’s just Fury doing what he does best.
Stirring the pot.
2. Bernard Hopkins
9 of 10
They say that certain things get better with age.
A fine wine.
Art.
Bernard Hopkins.
Hopkins, despite his one-sided loss to Sergey Kovalev in November, remains one of boxing’s A-plus operators in the ring and on the mic, and the best part of his trash talk is that it makes you think.
He’s a student, not just of boxing but of human psychology, carefully figuring out what buttons he can press in an opponent to throw them off their game. Like when he had this to say to Jean Pascal on HBO’s Face Off with Max Kellerman:
"I said to him that once I kick his (expletive) in Montreal he's gonna move. He's gonna move back somewhere where he came from. I think it's Haiti. They need him back there...He cannot walk in Montreal after May 21."
See what he did there? Pascal was an iconic figure in Montreal at the time. The lineal light heavyweight champion and one of the biggest sports stars in the city. Hopkins zeroed in and nailed him right in the chops where it hurts the most.
But Hopkins knows that different things work on different folks.
Pascal is a fiery guy who didn’t take kindly to the insinuations that he was gifted a draw in Montreal after their first fight. So that was an avenue of attack easily open to the old war horse.
Things were different against Beibut Shumenov last April.
The Kazakh was a decorated amateur with a solid professional record, but he’d never appeared on the sort of stage or on the level Hopkins had.
So what’d B-Hops do?
Shake his confidence a bit. Rattle the cage and see what shook out.
“Get ready for school, student. No disrespect, it’s logic. I am the professor with a PhD. I’m going to take his GED learning that you need more than that to make a living,” Hopkins said at the final presser before the fight.
“After this is over with, let’s pray he has the career going forward. I have a track record. There’s a whole list of names that didn’t survive the mental beatdown.”
Hopkins backed up every word of that claim.
Shumenov?
Time will tell if he ever recovers, but given past history, it doesn’t look good.
1. Freddie Roach
10 of 10
Say what you want about Freddie Roach, the boxing Hall of Famer best known for helping Pacquiao reach pound-for-pound glory, but he always has his guy’s back.
Always. Even if that means laying the verbal smackdown on another fighter.
Roach is a huge trash talker, and he’s pretty good at it.
Take this for example, where he makes it pretty clear what he thinks Cotto would do to Golovkin:
"I think that Miguel Cotto will kick his a**,” Roach told Satterfield. “I just think that he can outbox that guy.”
Not sure if you’re going to get a lot of love on that one, Freddie, but you’ve got Cotto’s back, and that’s what you should say, even if we’re 100 percent certain you believe it.
Try this one on for size.
“I think Canelo Alvarez is obviously our No. 1 choice, and then I would love to go fight Triple G [Gennady Golovkin] after we win that fight,” said Roach to Ryan Songalia. “Of course there’s [Floyd] Mayweather out there, he’s ducking Manny but he beat Cotto once and I don’t know if he wants to fight us but that’s a pretty interesting fight for me.”
A zinger at Canelo—we can beat that guy—and then there’s Golovkin—the guy whose a** we can kick—and then a potshot at Mayweather—just because.
You could literally fill an entire column with just quotes and brain droppings from the legendary trainer, and, come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea.
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