The Ring’s Updated P4P: Terence Crawford elevated #1, Overlooking Usyk’s More Impressive Record of Unification and Dominance

Terence Crawford has been elevated to #1 in The Ring’s updated pound-for-pound ratings today following his victory over undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez last Saturday night at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

The Ring’s panel has placed Crawford (42-0, 31 KOs) above the previous #1 Oleksandr Usyk at the top spot in the pound-for-pound rankings. It’s a purely subjective choice by the panel, but it does not make much sense.

Putting Usyk’s Wins Against Crawford’s

I don’t believe Crawford deserves to be ranked in the top 5, as his wins in the last five years aren’t good enough. In the last five years, since 2020, Crawford has beaten these fighters:

• Canelo Alvarez
• Israil Madrimov
• Errol Spence: Post-car crash
• David Avanesyan
• Shawn Porter
• Kell Brook: *After loss to Gennadiy Golovkin

Alvarez, 35, had already shown signs of fading since his loss to Dmitry Bivol in 2022, and he looked like a broken shell of his old self in his last three fights against these fighters: William Scull, Edgar Berlanga, and Jaime Munguia.

Understandably, boxing fans on social media are angry about Usyk being demoted by The Ring staff, as he accomplished a lot more than Crawford by cleaning out the heavyweight division by defeating these three: Anthony Joshua x 2, Tyson Fury x 2, and Daniel Dubois.

Why Crawford Doesn’t Deserve #1

• Didn’t clean out the 168-lb division: Crawford only beat Canelo at 168. That’s Bud’s only fight at super middleweight. He has not cleaned out the division like Usyk has at heavyweight and Naoya Inoue has at super bantamweight. For Crawford to cement himself as the best at 168, he would have to beat these fighters: Christian Mbilli, Osleys Iglesias, Hamzah Sheeraz, Diego Pacheco, and Lester Martinez.
• Not active enough: fighting just once a year since 2020 isn’t good enough for a fighter to be moved to the #1 spot in any rating organization.
• Calculated matchmaking: Crawford fought just once at 154 against Israil Madrimov, and didn’t fight these talents: Abass Baraou, Jaron Ennis, Vergil Ortiz Jr, Sebastian Fundora, or Bakhram Murtazaliev. At super middleweight, Terence hasn’t fought any of the top contenders. Again, his only fight was against a faded, stamina-plagued Canelo.

The performance by Crawford was not the domination that some fans mistakenly believe it to be. It was a very close fight, and it could have gone the other way, as Terence didn’t pull away until the championship rounds after Canelo gassed out.

Crawford’s Win Is Not as Great as It Seems

The way that some fans talk, they believe it was a one-sided fight with Crawford winning 9-3 or 10-2. It suggests that they didn’t actually watch the fight on Netflix, because it was not that kind of fight. Crawford’s offense was too inconsistent through the first eight rounds to give him credit for winning more than two of them.

Canelo constantly pushed the past through nine rounds, landing the harder shots, and chasing a reluctant and old-looking Crawford around the ring. It wasn’t a pound-for-pound #1 type of effort from Crawford. Indeed, I don’t believe it was worthy of even the #10 spot.

The Ring’s Updated Pound-for-Pound Rankings

1. Terence Crawford
2. Oleksandr Usyk
3. Naoya Inoue
4. Dmitry Bivol
5. Artur Beterbiev
6. Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez
7. Canelo Alvarez
8. Junto Nakatani
9. Shakur Stevenson
10. David Benavidez