Canelo Alvarez dominated John Ryder in their bout for the undisputed super middleweight title on Saturday near Alvarez's hometown of Guadalajara, Mexico. Alvarez dropped Ryder once, battered him twice and won an easy unanimous decision by scores of 118–109 and 120–107.
By the middle of the third round, it was a foregone conclusion that Alvarez would win.
Despite this, however, Alvarez dropped two places in the Yahoo Sports pound-for-pound ranking of the 10 best boxers in the world. He goes from fourth to sixth, with Shakur Stevenson and Gervonta Davis leapfrogging him.
Alvarez was a 20-1 favorite to win, and while he won to improve his record to 59-2-2, I think it was only a few years ago that Alvarez would have put Ryder out there and forced him to retire. had not been. to go the distance.
It's a fine line we're walking here, and we're acknowledging that Alvarez was fighting his first fight since surgery on his left hand. It's not meant to suggest that he's done or is anywhere close. It's saying he's already a bad thing or two and given the talent in our top 10, he falls.
It is incredible to note that Alvarez is the only fighter in the Yahoo Sports Top 10 to have lost and one of only two, along with 33-0-1 WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, not to have a perfect record.
It's definitely not overemphasizing the damage. Alvarez does what I want every fighter to do: He looks for the best competition for almost every fight. Three of Alvarez's former opponents, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shane Mosely and Miguel Cotto, are already enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Gennady Golovkin will almost certainly make the cut among the rest of his opponents, and Dmitry Bivol and Sergey Kovalev have a good shot.
If the latter three fighters make it, it means that Alvarez has fought about 10 percent of the fights against Hall of Famers so far in his career.
However, he didn't look like his usual self against Ryder, and that will see him lose two spots in our rankings.
With that in mind, here's how the top 10 shake out:
Boxing pound-for-pound rankings as of May 8
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Terence Crawford (39-0, 30 KOs), WBO welterweight champion. Previous ranking: 1
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Naoya Inoue (24-0, 21 KOs), the undisputed bantamweight champion. Previous ranking: 2
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Oleksandr Usyk (20-0, 13 KOs), IBF-WBA-WBO Heavyweight Champion. Previous ranking: 3
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Shakur Stevenson (19-0, 9 KOs), lightweight contender. Previous ranking: 5
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Gervonta Davis (29-0, 27 KOs), secondary WBA lightweight champion. Previous ranking: 6
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Canelo Alvarez (58-2-2, 39 KOs), the undisputed super middleweight champion. Previous ranking: 4
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Devin Haney (29-0, 15 KOs), the undisputed lightweight champion. Previous ranking: 7
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Tyson Fury (33-0-1, 24 KOs), WBC Heavyweight Champion. Previous ranking: 8
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Dmitry Bivol (21-0, 11 KOs), WBA light heavyweight champion. Previous ranking: 9
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Artur Beterbiev (19-0, 19 KOs), IBF-WBC-WBO light heavyweight champion. Previous ranking: 10