Floyd Mayweather has had his say on who tops the pound-for-pound rankings in the wake of some high-level match-ups featuring the best in the business – but he thinks one fight still needs to happen before the current debate can be settled.
First up, Japanese knockout artist Naoya Inoue blew away Stephen Fulton to become unified super-bantamweight king having already established himself as the undisputed champion in the division below.
The ease with which he saw off Fulton’s challenge, and then the knockout blow he delivered in the 8th round, took him to the top of the P4P rankings for many.
However, just days later, Terence Crawford put in a similarly superb showing against Errol Spence Jr. He dominated just about from the off and eventually stopped Spence in the 9th round to take all four world titles in the welterweight division.The consensus was that the win immediately elevated him above Inoue in the P4P, but not everyone agrees.
Speaking to FightHype, former multi-division world champion Mayweather has plenty of praise for Inoue.
“I think he’s a helluva fighter, I take nothing away from him, helluva fighter. And I like him. He takes a lot of stuff from my playbook, but that’s OK, in boxing, you’re supposed to take something from the gears.”
He then proposed what would be a superb fight with one of his charges, a multi-weight world champion, fearsome puncher and one of the best active lightweights in the world who most recently knocked out Ryan Garcia.“What I would like to see is if [Inoue] would fight Gervonta [Davis] at a catchweight.”
Mayweather believes that Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis is unfairly left out of the conversation of the best in the world by too many.
One way to cement his place would be the Inoue bout, although just how far the Japanese champion will move up in weight remains to be seen.
