Post your prediction. Here's mine: 1. Golovkin 2. Pirog 3. Lemieux 4. Korobov 5. Guerrero/N'Dam N'Jikam Edit: I forgot Korobov....!!!
You're right... he was struggling with C level fighters... and he lost to a B level fighter in Froch...
I'm less optimistic about Hassan and Guerrero than the others. Even as a big HNN fan and a fair enough fan of Guerrero, they both have a lot of defensive flaws that need to be addressed. Offensively, they are both there though. Pirog and Golovkin are pretty much complete at the moment. I don't see any fundamental flaws that will cause either massive problems. I think they will be 1 and 2 also. Although a lot depends on how Martinez does, he could still be there in 2 years, you never know. I don't think Lemieux will be the full package in 2 years though. I think he'll still be brought alone slowly given he's only 22 and didn't do particularly well as an amateur, he's still learning on the job. Sturm could still be top 5 in two years if he manages to avoid the likes of those mentioned somehow. Williams might decide to settle at 160 by then and his busy style and experience might given some of the greener guys stepping up a bit too much to contend with, so he could be top 5 aswell.
Froch who went on to beat Jermain Taylor and Andre Dirrell? Froch who won a close exciting contest with Pascal who went on to beat Chad Dawson - P4P number 4 in many peoples eyes. 2 years ago, Pascal was a legitimate and respected contender who has gone on to be a champion. Guerrero struggled with Ishe Smith, who Jacob's had a much easier time with. N'jikam struggled last night with a no-name georgian fighter, who gave him the fight of his life. I'm not saying that these 2 aren't worthy contenders, they are. I'm just saying that they may not be as good as you think they are, and there are possibly other middleweight contenders who are better than them.
I'm ranking him in absolute terms, in terms of the level of his performance, cause anything else wouldn't make sense. There are no elite-level performance SMWs around right now (yet). The best of the lot: Bute, Ward and Dirrell (imo) perform at B+ (top world class) level at their very best.