Floyd Mayweather has named five active fighters, four of them current world champions, who he believes are among boxing’s most elite.
In his prime, there were very few that came close to threatening Mayweather’s pound-for-pound supremacy, hence his status as one of the all-time greats.
Since his retirement in 2017, however, there have been several candidates, including Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford, that have staked their claim to the sport’s ultimate throne.
At this stage, it is generally accepted that Naoya Inoue and Oleksandr Usyk, both two-division undisputed champions, are jostling for position as the top dog.
At the same time, though, there are other champions, such as Shakur Stevenson, Devin Haney and David Benavidez, who could climb the pound-for-pound ladder once Usyk and Inoue have called time on their decorated careers.
Stevenson, in particular, has proven his elite quality by unanimously outpointing Teofimo Lopez to become a four-division world champion in January.
As three-weight world champions, Haney and Benavidez are also in the process of crafting their own legacies, which explains why Mayweather mentioned them during his interview Come And Talk 2 Me.
“Benavidez is a hell of a fighter. We’ve [also] got Keyshawn Davis, and we’ve got Shakur … Devin.
“There’s [also] the little guy from Japan [Inoue]. Japan got some good fighters too.”
Of all five names, former world lightweight champion Davis is perhaps the most peculiar, given that he is yet to claim a career-defining victory.
As the mandatory challenger to Haney’s WBO welterweight title, though, ‘The Businessman’ could soon prove that he belongs on any pound-for-pound list.
