Greater/Better fighter: Ricardo Lopez or Gennady Golovkin

Ricardo for me and by a fair margin.

GGG (and Kovalev, a contemporary) were HBO budget projects when that network was winding down its boxing program and spending far, far less than it had in previous years.

So HBO latched onto a couple of EE fighters who weren’t raking in huge money so were happy with what the network could/would pay but HBO pretty much let them fight the lower lights in their weight classes and get what amounted to easy wins that made them look a lot better than they might have with a budget to lure in the best possible challenges. It wasn’t smoke and mirrors, but it wasn’t exactly a Hunger Games gauntlet either.

That’s not to say GGG was bad … just that it was more of a numbers game (how many wins/title defenses) than a challenge of quality opponents.

If Canelo is vastly overrated and propped up as many claim (see the World/main forum for many opinions on this), then surely GGG is at least as much so — because whether you believe he deserved to win vs Alvarez or not (I had the first fight a draw and the next for Canelo), he surely didn’t dominate. He had a world-class jab but nothing else to me seemed special.

Ricardo to me was more dominant (fair play if you want to say there wasn’t a whole lot to dominate in the shallow waters at his weight, but I’d say the same for GGG) and showed a lot more well-rounded game.