Pick your top five for the 2025 HOF

Pacquiao
Roman
Chitalada
Moon
Laciar

 

Pacquiao
Laciar
Moon
Roman
Narvaez

 

Manny, Tarver, Maske, Nunn and Fernando Vargas.

I don't follow 168,200 and the divisions below 140 so just going off the 6 divisions I follow.

 

I'm not really qualified to make a good selection here - it requires deep knowledge of couple different decades... (By the way, I strongly suspect that quite a few people who have an official vote, probably are not qualified to do it either...).

I did a small negative selection though, for fun. I crossed out:
- Arthur Abraham
- Jorge Arce
- Paulie Ayala
- Lucian Bute
- Acelino Freitas
- Mikey Garcia
- Artur Grigorian
- Mikkel Kessler
- Omar Narvaez
- Orzubek Nazarov
- Sven Ottke
- Shawn Porter
- Shinsuke Yamanaka

With those guys, I can already see They would not make it for the top 5 for me. Narrowing it down to the final 5 though... no, that's beyond my current level of competence. Will leave it to McGrain's and Greg Price's of the world, ha.

 

Roman for sure, he should be there already.

Pac
Nunn
Arbakachov
Moon

 

Manny
Tarver
Israel Vasquez (for the action fights)
Eubank and Benn since they might as well be on the same year.

*I don't know much about the tiny guys and guys with Asian names.

 

Manny is the only one I didn’t have a second’s hesitation about. He should be unanimous and the first name on everyone’s list - indisputable ATG.

I agree with the list of @Greg Price99 in terms of achievement for Chitalada, Laciar and Roman. It’s good to see some lesser-known but high achieving little men on there and some posthumous recognition some 34 years on from his death would be great to acknowledge Roman’s legacy.

Not 100% convinced about Moon over some of the others, though. Tarver and Nunn are definitely worthy of consideration, for sure. @Mastrangelo was bang on in his dismissals of those fighters he listed. Getting to a clear top 5 is hard.

Just depends if it’s done on achievement or popularity. Vasquez was highly entertaining and I suspect he might make it in on that basis.

 

Manny
Benn
Arbachkov
Roman
Lockridge

 

On the fence about Meldrick Taylor. I reckon he'll get in some time soon but I'm not sure how much he deserves to be ahead of some of the more distinguished smaller weight fighter, who, bluntly, had more complete careers than Meldrick did. His win over McGirt remains very underrated imo and his effort against Chavez was nothing shy of Herculean. Outside of that though, all you have are his amateur credentials and a draw over a past his best Howard Davies Jr. I'd like to see him get in while he's still aware of what's happening around him though. As it stands, my top 5 is probably Pacquiao, Arbachakov, Laciar, Nunn, and Roman. 115 seems to be the least well-represented division in the HOF btw, no Roman, Watanabe, Laciar, Penalosa, Narvaez, Darchinyan, or Tokuyama.

 

Yuri....I'm worried that Arbachakov..may lack thickness in his resume,his best win over an ATG is just Muangchai Kittikasem,the others are either semi ATGs or b-level but still very good contenders,not to take anything away from him though since I love Yuri's style.

 

1. Pac
2. Roman
3. Michezski
4. Maske
5. Vasquez