Junto, Inoue, Ioka, Teraji, and arguably Kosei Tanaka, maybe Ginjiro Shigeoka if you're an eye test guy. The top talents in the sport are mostly being produced by Japan right now.
You guys are all wrong. Takuma Inoue is the #1 P4P fighter in the world. But seriously, I think Junto Nakatani is near the bottom of the top 10.
a minimumweight, a light flyweight, a super flyweight, a bantamweight, and a super bantamweight lol come on, most boxing fans don't even watch these divisions. And most countries don't have even have fighters this small. Divisions like minimumweight are very shallow there's only like about 200 fighters.
When people don't have ioka on their pound for pound list their list loses credibility in my eyes. The man has been winning title fights for over a decade.
Just because few people watch the lower weight divisions doesn't make them less good. Some of the best fighter in the sport's history come from the lower weight classes: Jimmy Wilde, Manuel Ortiz, Miguel Canto, Eder Jofre, Ruben Olivares, Fighting Harada, etc., etc. I think you mean most Western countries when you say most countries don't have guys that small, since nearly all of the great South American champions come from the lower weights, while East and South-East Asia (Thailand, Philippines, Japan) regularly produces the top talents in the lower weights. It depends on population demographics and regional diets. The biggest lower weight super-fight in a couple years happened last December between an American and Britton in Bam Rodriguez and Sunny Edwards. P4P lists aren't always about the depth of the division, they're about how well a fighter would do if he fought in the same way and was proportioned at different poundages, fighters can only fight the guys in front of them and in their division and are ranked accordingly. Yes, minimumweight has fewer fighters but there is still good talent at the highest level of the division with the Shigeoka bros, Oscar Collazo, Melvin Jerusalem, Hasanboy Dusmatov, and Knockout CP Freshmart still kicking about somewhere. I mean, how great of a talent pool is HW? How many people do you meet who are over 6ft, weigh 250lbs, are athletic, can pack a punch, and have the attitude to want to punch people for a living? Not that many I'd wager, the vast majority of the HW division is just fat dudes who aren't very good at boxing but who might get by on a big punch.
