Who is boxing’s P4P king? Inoue, Usyk, and Crawford have made their cases

Naoya Inoue, Oleksandr Usyk, and Terence Crawford have all made their P4P case.

Boxing usually has a fairly clear pound-for-pound ruler, but Naoya Inoue and Terence “Bud” Crawford have been in a battle for a good while now for that recognition. And now we have a third man who has unquestionably entered the conversation.

With his win over Tyson Fury this past Saturday, Oleksandr Usyk became undisputed heavyweight champion, sealing without any question whatsoever his Hall of Fame-bound legacy in boxing, and making for a three-way dance in the P4P chatter.

Pound-for-pound, of course, is mostly a marketing tool and always has been, and other than that it is most notable as a source of conversation for pundits and fans. Heavyweights rarely get sincere consideration for the top spot, but Usyk is a rare case, a natural cruiserweight who has done something exceptionally rare.

So who deserves to be called No. 1? We’ll have our staff update and vote at the top of June, and last time out, Inoue still held the top spot, receiving four of five first-place votes. One suspects at least a vote or two there might change. Crawford had the remaining top vote, finishing second, and Usyk came in third, taking the No. 3 spot on all five ballots.

Let’s take a quick look at each man in the race.

Naoya Inoue

• Reigning undisputed champion at super bantamweight, following an undisputed achievement at bantamweight.
• Deeper in his history, he also won titles at junior flyweight and super flyweight, and would surely have won at least one belt at flyweight except he skipped over that division.
• 22 of his 27 professional fights have been world title fights.
• Dominant, having rarely faced much adversity.
• Some believe he lacks a true definitive win. 2019 Fight of the Year war against Nonito Donaire probably comes closest, and was also without question his toughest night in the ring. He’s fought a lot of quality opponents, but he doesn’t have the marquee — for some fans, anyway — win like Usyk has over Fury now, or Crawford had over Errol Spence Jr.
• A lot of quality wins on his resume aren’t against names familiar to a lot of fans — particularly American and European fans, who make up the bulk of these discussions — and that gives another perception that he doesn’t have much by way of quality wins. He does, though.

Oleksandr Usyk

• Undisputed champion at heavyweight, the first in the four-belt era that dates back to 2007, which is longer ago than you’re possibly thinking off the top of your head. Former undisputed cruiserweight champion.
• Has obvious, huge wins over Fury and twice against Anthony Joshua, and beat the best cruiserweights available when he was in the division before moving up to chase — and attain — heavyweight glory.
• 11 of 22 fights have been world title contests. Doesn’t match Inoue’s number, but still an incredible ratio.
• Not as purely dominant as the other two. Chris Algieri recently put it this way, after the Fury fight: We’ve seen Usyk struggle as an amateur, where he won an Olympic gold medal, and as a cruiserweight, where he was undisputed champion, and definitely as a heavyweight, where he is now undisputed champion. He just keeps winning. It’s not that he’s bombing everyone out of there or whatever, he has to “figure out” a lot of fights. But he always does it. And when you do it this long, with that consistency, it’s not luck or breaks going your way. It’s that he backs his fantastic skills with an exceptional boxing IQ and an unusually high mental fortitude.
• The cruiserweight run is sort of similar to the knock Inoue gets, in that he beat everyone he could, but only diehards know who any of those guys are, really. To be fair, this is all a conversation best left to diehards, but it never will totally work that way.

Terence “Bud” Crawford

• Former undisputed champion at welterweight and super lightweight.
• Also won a world title at lightweight, and will aim for a fourth division on Aug. 3, when he moves up to super welterweight to face Israil Madrimov.
• Finally got a long-awaited showdown with Errol Spence Jr and just absolutely thrashed him, took him to the woodshed, put an all-time beating on the guy.
• Like Inoue, has been largely dominant. Very few have provided any significant challenge.
• Had the knock for years that he wasn’t facing the best opposition, same as the other two, but in a different way. Crawford’s issue was being a welterweight signed to Top Rank, who just didn’t have access to the top names in the division. So he was beating faded versions of Amir Khan and Kell Brook, guys like Jose Benavidez Jr and Egidijus Kavaliauskas, and when he left Top Rank after beating Shawn Porter — who had already been through the PBC wringer and retired after the fight with Crawford — he did a one-off, fly-by-night money-grab against David Avanesyan. But when he finally got the Spence fight, again, it ultimately seemed like the PBC guys had a years-long tournament to qualify for a chance to get scorched by “Bud” Crawford.

So who ya got?

To be clear, I don’t think there’s a wrong choice here! We’re genuinely blessed to be seeing three guys like this do so much that they’ve started this conversation. It’s a wonderful argument to be having, because every one of them is qualified, deserving, and headed for Canastota someday, without question*.

*(If you do manage to question this, please go look at who is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame and come back still believing that the line is Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, and Sugar Ray Robinson, and not the likes of Barry McGuigan and Arturo Gatti.)

So who’s got YOUR vote?