Hold up. Someone’s trying to pull a fast one. Actually, it’s more like some than one. Not surprising though is the fact that it’s the usual suspects.
Got quite a few messages today regarding the newly published pound for pound ranking for Kevin Iole’s Yahoo! column.
Upon inspecting the said article, the first thing that came to mind was how Bernard Hopkins fell out of their top ten list just like that.
Granted it was a list voted upon by so-called experts so I can’t really point to one person. And besides, it’s all hypothetical anyway and based on opinion, but am I really that far off from these older scribes?
Last time I checked, Hopkins was a fixture in the pound for pound list. Is beating Roy Jones Jr. that bad to warrant Hopkins’ expulsion from the list? Hopkins by the way is on a rumored exodus from Golden Boy Promotions after the legendary fighter claimed that his partners in GBP were planning his exit from the sport for him. Not good.
Next of course is the obvious. Perched atop Yahoo’s list is none other than Manny Pacquiao- except that he wasn’t at the very top. There was a familiar name op top of him and it wrote Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Interesting.
I don’t know about you but if you asked me, Mayweather may have beaten Shane Mosley convincingly but Pacquiao has been beating similar caliber opponents more at the same rate as well. And the fact that he’s breaking records and defeating guys bigger than him still weighs a lot in my opinion.
In the last 6 moths, Pacquiao has beaten two of the best welterweights in Miguel Cotto — who defeated Mosley a couple of years ago — and Joshua Clottey. It’s hard for me to say that Mayweather’s victory over Mosley weighs heavier than those two. And there is a saying in boxing that if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.
If Mayweather wants to take the crown Pacquiao moved up in weight and worked hard for, he has to beat him or at least string a similar number of impressive victories over formidable opponents. Forget his win against the smaller and bloated Juan Manuel Marquez. Floyd himself admitted during an interview on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption show that the fight against the Mexican legend was nothing but a tune-up.
But who am I to argue against my American counterparts right? I’m just dSource. I’m no expert. I just use common sense.
Yahoo! Top 10 P4P list:
1. Floyd Mayweather Jr. 2. Manny Pacquiao 3. Paul Williams 4. Juan Manuel Marquez 5. Chad Dawson 6. Sergio Martinez
7. Wladimir Klitschko
8. Timothy Bradley 9. Shane Mosley 10. Juan Manuel Lopez
