{"id":576380,"date":"2026-05-10T12:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T12:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/576380\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T12:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T12:39:07","slug":"former-world-champion-says-he-is-the-best-boxer-in-the-world-ahead-of-usyk-and-inoue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/576380\/","title":{"rendered":"Former world champion says he is the best boxer in the world ahead of Usyk and Inoue"},"content":{"rendered":"

While most would regard Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> and Naoya Inoue<\/a> as the leading pound-for-pound stars, a former world champion has gone against the grain and placed himself at the very top.<\/p>\n

Due to their tremendous talent and consistency at the highest level, Usyk and Inoue have become two-division undisputed champions in their respective weight classes.<\/p>\n

When all is said and done, they will doubtless enter the Hall of Fame as two generational greats, having fought and beaten the very best of their era.<\/p>\n

In an attempt to skip the queue, however, former unified welterweight champion Jaron Ennis<\/a> has positioned himself at the top of his own pound-for-pound list.<\/p>\n

\u2018Boots\u2019 unified the IBF and WBA world titles in April 2025, dethroning Eimantas Stanionis with a sixth-round finish<\/a> to establish himself as the top dog at 147lbs.<\/p>\n

Other than that, a lack of notable victories has made it difficult to even place the 28-year-old in the top 10, let alone consider him a top five pound-for-pound star.<\/p>\n

In an interview with RING CHAMPS<\/a>, though, Ennis insisted that he deserves to be positioned above Usyk, Shakur Stevenson and Jesse Rodriguez, while not even including Inoue in his list.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m gonna say me, Usyk, Shakur [and] \u2018Bam\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Ennis believes that, on an ability-for-ability metric, he is superior to those who have done far more to cement their legacies in the sport.<\/p>\n

In any case, the unbeaten American will look to become a two-weight unified champion, and thus claim his most meaningful victory, when enters his second super-welterweight outing against Xander Zayas<\/a> on June 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While most would regard Oleksandr Usyk and Naoya Inoue as the leading pound-for-pound stars, a former world champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-576380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}