Ranking the 10 Best Brawlers in Boxing Today
Some guys do it because they have to.
Others because they love the thrill of mixing it up with an opponent, proving who is the better man by winging bombs and seeing who can last the longest.
And some do it simply because it's what fans want to see.
Brawling is a ratings-grabber in boxing. Fans tune in hoping to see action, excitement and hopefully a spectacular knockout.
Brawlers provide them the best opportunity for all three.
These are the 10 best brawlers, in one man's opinion, in the sport of boxing today.
Some of them are straight-up, unrefined sluggers who come at you with one plan and no backup. They simply want to knock your head off and will spend all 12 rounds trying.
Others are more technically sound but enjoy the art of slugging it out.
If you disagree with my list, feel free to post your own selections in the comments section.
Let the debate begin!
10. Diego Chaves
1 of 10
Diego Chaves just keeps on coming back, even though he can't seem to win on American soil.
The Argentine slugger has two losses and a draw—which should've been a loss—fighting stateside, but he's established a reputation as a dangerous, rough out for just about anyone.
His most recent contest, with former welterweight champion Timothy Bradley, was an entertaining scrap—mostly because Bradley allowed more action early than he should've—and proved that Chaves remains one of those high-risk, low-reward type brawlers who can make you look bad or beat you if you aren't careful.
It's ludicrous, as Julie Lederman did, to say Chaves won the fight, but he wasn't outclassed. He didn't look like he wasn't worthy of sharing a ring with one of boxing's elite pound-for-pound talents.
Chaves is just very workmanlike, and, yes, a little dirty.
OK.
A lot dirty.
He'll hit you wherever he can—he was disqualified against Brandon Rios in his previous outing before facing Bradley—causing damage or drawing you off your game. That's his game.
That's just who he is as a fighter, and it's gotten him three quality paydays at least, with more likely on the way.
9. Giovani Segura
2 of 10
It’s a shame that fighters in the lower weight classes don’t get their due.
Some of these guys can really fight, and Giovani Segura is a perfect example.
Yes, he’s not the fighter he once was, the result of a high-impact career filled with many in-ring wars, but he still ranks among the top brawlers in the sport.
Win or lose.
Segura doesn’t win every time—he was overwhelmed in his most recent fight against unified flyweight champion Juan Francisco Estrada—but he doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit.
The Aztec Warrior is a straight-up brawler who has won multiple world championships in the light flyweight division with his devastating punching power. He’s a high-octane, aggressive power puncher in a fighting neighborhood that generally favors speedy and fleet-of-foot fighters.
He was the first man to knock out previously-unbeaten likely future Hall of Famer Ivan "Iron Boy" Calderon, accomplishing the feat with spectacular brutality in back-to-back fights in 2010 and 2011.
You’re just not going to find a ton of guys between 108-112 pounds with a knockout percentage north of 75 percent, an impressive feat in its own right.
Segura is one of those guys, and you can see why in his 2013 Fight of the Year against Hernan Marquez.
8. Shawn Porter
3 of 10
Maybe it's not technically fair to classify Shawn Porter, the former IBF welterweight champion as a brawler, but the stylistic lines that separate one class from another are often blurry.
Porter is probably best described as a swarmer.
His style is built on getting close to his opponents and unleashing a high volume of punches intended to overwhelm them with his speed, power and activity rate.
That style was highly successful against Devon Alexander—when he captured his first world title—and veteran multi-weight champion Paulie Malignaggi, who caught a wicked beating before a spectacular knockout defeat.
Seriously, Malignaggi had been in there with some pretty tough customers and given a good account of himself, even when he lost. But Porter just blitzed right through him, stopping him in truly scary fashion in what was believed to be his breakout performance.
The Cleveland, Ohio native didn't fare quite as well in his second defense.
Kell Brook's rangy jab and boxing ability were enough to blunt his offensive swarm and take his world title.
Porter definitely has a ton of talent, but it's possible that hype blinded some fans and observers to the few flaws in his game. A loss could wind up being the best thing for him, forcing him to add a couple of new wrinkles to what has proven to be a potentially potent, swarming offensive attack.
.jpg?w=256 "PATRIOTS-VRABEL")
7. Omar Figueroa
4 of 10
Does anyone else get the sense that we'd better enjoy Omar Figueroa now because he isn't going to be around all that long?
The 25-year-old Texan isn't a boxer, he's a fighter.
A slugger.
A brawler.
Someone who has no problem taking a few knocks upside the head in order to make his own presence felt.
Those types of guys are very fun to watch, and the crowd loves them, but if you're not careful you can have a very short shelf life.
Figueroa was recently stripped of his lightweight championship by the WBC while he takes the time to heal from a particularly nasty gash above his left eye suffered on a headbutt against Daniel Estrada in August.
His offensive flurries are borderline ridiculous—Showtime's Mauro Ranallo described the stoppage of Estrada as "blitzkrieg" on the broadcast—and have helped him to great success, even with a somewhat unpolished technical skill set.
Figueroa's win over Nihito Arakawa was your prototypical phone-booth fight, with both men standing at short range and trading bomb after bomb after bomb. The sweet science it was not.
But the crowd loved it.
And they'll continue to love the aggressive, attacking and somewhat limited Figueroa for as long as he lasts.
6. Orlando Salido
5 of 10
Orlando Salido is one of the most deceiving fighters in boxing. He's a wily veteran brawler who has earned his way to stardom by taking the road less traveled.
He began his career with a 12-7-1 record in his first 20 fights, seemingly on the path to getting nowhere in a hurry.
Salido has won 26 of his 30 fights since 2002, capturing four world titles at featherweight and super featherweight and ruining the career of the once-promising Juan Manuel Lopez with a pair of vicious knockouts.
Undefeated star Mikey Garcia dropped him twice in the opening round and two more times en route to a ludicrously wide technical-decision win in early 2013, leading to a sense that Salido's hard-fought road to the upper echelons of the sport had finally winded to a conclusion.
But the Mexican veteran rebounded to take back a world title on the Bradley-Juan Manuel Marquez undercard and then used every dirty trick in the book to take rising sensation Vasyl Lomachenko to the woodshed in an upset victory.
Salido didn't make any effort to come into the fight at the contracted weight, and he made things very rough and uncomfortable for the Ukrainian, who was in just his second pro fight at the time. His liberal sprinkling of questionably legal and borderline tactics were the difference in the fight.
Jumping to super featherweight, Salido captured Bleacher Report's Fight of the Year, a seven-knockdown thriller over Terdsak Kokietgym to snare a piece of the 126-pound title in September.
If you didn't see this fight yet, get on over to YouTube and get on that.
5. Brandon Rios
6 of 10
Brandon Rios was a much-maligned lightweight champion when he stepped through the ropes for what would prove to be the first of three bouts with fellow undefeated slugger Mike Alvarado in 2012.
The bout was promised as a Fight of the Year contender—the two will meet for a third time this coming Saturday night on HBO—and it delivered the goods in a huge way.
Rios showed tremendous heart and grit, rebounding from a beating in Rounds 4 and 5, when the larger Alvarado seemed to be imposing his will on the fight with his superior size and technical boxing ability.
Alvarado appeared on the verge of victory when Rios unleashed a string of bombs in Round 6 that turned the fight around and left his foe on wobbly legs.
Rios kept coming, slugging away like he was chopping down a tree, hurting Alvarado again midway through Round 7 and forcing him into the ropes. A few more well-timed bombs upstairs forced referee Pat Russell, perhaps a little prematurely but not enough to complain, to halt the contest and give Rios a scintillating come-from-behind win.
That level of heart, grit and ability to land short hooks and uppercuts in close quarters are what make Rios such a compelling but at times limited fighter. He's ridiculously brave, and that sometimes makes him willing to absorb more punishment than he needs.
We'll see what each man has left in the tank when they meet for a rubber match on Saturday.
For my dime, you can expect something more like the slugfest of the first fight and not the somewhat less exciting rematch.
4. Ruslan Provodnikov
7 of 10
The Siberian Rocky can be a very feast-or-famine type of fighter.
Feast:
His one-sided destruction of Alvarado to win the WBO Junior Welterweight Championship in 2013.
Famine:
His inability to cut off the ring after dropping Chris Algieri twice in the opening round, losing his championship in a shocking upset at the Barclays Center last year.
That's just the way it is with Provo.
The Russian slugger really, really enjoys that he gets to cash a paycheck for throwing punches with mean intentions. He can be downright scary in the ring, inflicting tremendous physical and mental pressure on his foe.
Seriously, he has the look of a stone-cold killer in the ring, and it must be intimidating looking across the ring at Provodnikov and knowing that wolverine is about to be unleashed with the intention of hurting you.
Can he be outboxed?
Apparently, yes.
But that doesn't mean I'd like to try.
3. Lucas Matthysse
8 of 10
They call him “The Machine.”
Take that for what you will.
Lucas Matthysse will never be confused for a technical specimen in the ring.
No disrespect intended, but the Argentine bomber’s technique can be summed up as:
Seek...find...destroy.
Matthysse nearly sent Lamont Peterson’s head careening off his shoulders and onto the Atlantic City boardwalk in 2013, setting up a huge unification showdown with Danny Garcia on the Mayweather vs. Canelo undercard.
He came up short that night, the victim of a boxing masterpiece by the Philadelphian, and rebounded with a demolition victory over Roberto Ortiz and an exciting life-and-death win over John Molina in a Fight of the Year contender.
The Molina fight was vicious, bloody and brutal. It wasn’t for the faint of heart, with both men loading up on colossal power punches that inflicted all sorts of serious hurt when they connected.
Matthysse ultimately claimed a scalp—nearly literally—by surviving a pair of knockdowns to bludgeon a too-brave and bleeding-profusely-from-the-head Molina early in Round 11.
That’s why they call him a machine. Like the Terminator, he just keeps on coming until he gets you.
2. Leo Santa Cruz
9 of 10
Leo Santa Cruz is a two-division world champion and has established himself as one of boxing’s can’t-miss attractions.
How has he done all that by the age of 25?
The Mexican is an offensive dynamo who makes his money by getting to the inside and planting himself there, overwhelming his foe with quick, powerful combinations. He’s a pure banger, and that makes him a tough out and intriguing style matchup for even the most technically skilled fighters.
Cough, Guillermo Rigondeaux, cough.
He’s just that overwhelming, frequently hitting the triple digits in punches thrown per round.
Unfortunately, Santa Cruz has been locked in neutral for the better part of the last 12 months. He fought a woefully overmatched former sparring partner on the Mayweather vs. Maidana 2 undercard and overwhelmed a negligibly better opponent on Saturday night.
He has an exciting, all-action style and a personality to match.
But he needs to move forward, and fast.
No more Jesus Ruiz-type fighters, please.
1. Marcos Maidana
10 of 10
Marcos Maidana is the best brawler in boxing.
Hands down. End of discussion.
The Argentine’s style has always been well down the line onto the cruder end of the spectrum, but he makes it work and showed against Floyd Mayweather that it can be effective against even boxing’s top defensive wizard.
He forced the pound-for-pound king into tight spots in which we haven’t seen him since the first Jose Luis Castillo fight, and he did it with pure aggression, an indomitable will and more than a few borderline-illegal tactics.
Call them roughhousing or fouls—whichever brand of vodka you prefer—but they made the fight pretty darn competitive and left the pound-for-pound king in his first genuine fight in over a decade.
Maidana is physically strong and durable, and he doesn’t know the meaning of going backward. He comes at you like a freight train, unleashing power shots without any particular regard for where they land and with the intention of damaging whatever part of your body finds itself on the unfortunate receiving end.
His trainer Robert Garcia has worked to refine his approach a bit over the past couple of years, adding a jab and helping him vary his angles of attack, but Maidana essentially remains a what-you-see-is-what-you-get fighter.
He's coming to get in your chest and pound you until you don't want any more.
.jpg?w=480 "PATRIOTS-VRABEL")
.jpg?w=600 "Cardinals May Be Bluffing Pick")
.jpg?w=600 "Former President Crashes Cowboys Presser")
