{"id":538051,"date":"2026-03-15T13:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T13:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/538051\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T13:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T13:23:07","slug":"marco-antonio-barrera-says-one-boxer-stands-alone-as-the-best-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/538051\/","title":{"rendered":"Marco Antonio Barrera says one boxer stands alone as the best in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mexican boxing legend Marco Antonio Barrera has revealed his top five pound-for-pound fighters, making it clear who he believes sits firmly at number one.<\/p>\n

It is generally accepted that two-division undisputed champions Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> and Naoya Inoue<\/a> are the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me, given their utter dominance across multiple weight classes.<\/p>\n

Usyk, in particular, has claimed a series of monumental victories against the likes of Tyson Fury<\/a>, Anthony Joshua<\/a> and Daniel Dubois<\/a>, establishing himself as the greatest heavyweight of this era.<\/p>\n

Inoue, too, has removed any doubt over his supremacy at 122lbs, where he will defend his undisputed crown against Junto Nakatani on May 2.<\/p>\n

But while there is little debate to be had about Usyk and Inoue\u2019s placement on any pound-for-pound list, the remaining spots are of course far more subjective.<\/p>\n

Largely because of his dominant unanimous decision victory over Teofimo Lopez<\/a> in January, many feel that Shakur Stevenson deserves a place in the top five.<\/p>\n

According to Barrera<\/a>, though, Usyk takes top spot ahead of Inoue with Dmitry Bivol, Jesse Rodriguez and Canelo Alvarez filling the other spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cNumber one Usyk.<\/p>\n

Number two Inoue; number three Bivol; number four \u2018Bam\u2019 Rodriguez; number five, I think, [is] Canelo Alvarez.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bivol became the undisputed light-heavyweight king in February 2025, exacting his revenge over Artur Beterbiev<\/a> by scoring a career-defining majority decision victory.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez, meanwhile, has taken the lower divisions by storm in recent years, perhaps most notably defeating Sunny Edwards and Juan Francisco Estrada in 2024.<\/p>\n

As for Canelo, it has become harder to justify his place in the top five since the Mexican lost to Terence Crawford, who moved up two weight divisions and secured a unanimous decision victory in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mexican boxing legend Marco Antonio Barrera has revealed his top five pound-for-pound fighters, making it clear who he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-538051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}