Here's my list. 20. Paul Williams 19. Lennox Lewis 18. Oscar De la Hoya 17. Israel Vasquez 16. Miguel Cotto 15. Felix trinidad 14. Ricky Hatton 13. Rafeal Marquez 12. Ricardo Lopez 11. Erik Morales 10. Winky Wright 9. Kostya Tszyu 8. Juan Manuel Marquez 7. Joe Calzaghe 6. Marco Antonio Barrera 5. Shane Mosely 4. Roy Jones 3. Bernard hopkins 2. Floyd Mayweather 1. Manny Pacquiao This based on my annual Pound for Pound rankings combined with their years as the best fighter in their weight class. Keith Edit fixed for Tito
what? he has beaten trinidad, delahoya, tarver, wright, pavlik.. and had very close fights with taylor twice and calzaghe.. who all could ve gone his way... and he unified the middleweight belts and hold on to them for 5 years
And naturally Calzaghe who unified the super middleweight title,was world champion for 11 years,beat Hopkins in America,retired unbeaten, he`s several places lower!! Your bias is embarrassing.
i wasn´t arguing about calzaghe´s place.. only your statement that hopkins should be around the 15th place
The paper champ beat Hopkins in the States. Name any other fighter who retired with a perfect record after 11 year a world champion and 15 years a pro? If Calzaghe was a paper champ then Hopkins was nothing more than a paper champ during his title reign also.
Ricardo Lopez beat Vorapin and Petelo in 2000 and 2001, and then retired, already clearly faded by that point. I don't understand how that qualifies him as a top 20 fighter in this decade. You could obviously argue such a placing in the 90's, but he was just putting the finishing touches on his career at the turn of the century. Lewis is a lot more deserving of a high placing than Lopez, despite the fact that he himself was starting to slow by the early years of the decade.
At that point I had Lopez in the top 5 pound for pound and with three years at the top of his weight class as he didn't retire until the end of 2002. Three years in the top 5 warrants a pretty high ranking in my books. Keith