Let's face it. Ring Magazine peaked well before it became the property of Golden Boy some time in the late seventies or early eighties when Bert Randolph Sugar's name was still featured at the top of the masthead and the internet was but a twinkle in Al Gore's eye. If you subscribe these days, by the time you get your copy in the mail, half the fights in the magazine have already taken place, and with training injuries being what they are, there is a good chance that the remaining half have been cancelled.
Despite all this, there is still a lure to the "Pound for Pound" list. In conferring status on the top ten fighters alive, regardless of weight, Ring manages to remain the "Bible of Boxing" in this one respect. And even if the magazine is biased in most areas, it still can't touch the sanctioning bodies for out-and-out corruption.
That being the case, it seems like it might be time to seriously question whether Sergio Gabriel Martinez might deserve to be higher on the list, and Mayweather and Pacquiao might need to be taken down just one or two notches.
Rating the fighters on activity and quality of opposition, and taking their outings within the last year into account, a serious case can be made that Martinez deserves the number two slot at the very least, and maybe even the crown of the pound-for-pound king.
In the space of about a year, Martinez has fought then-middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, rematched Paul Williams, and faced undefeated European Serhiy Dzinziruk for the vacant middleweight diamond belt. When he faced Pavlik, Kelly had only one loss against arguably the best fighter of the last twenty years, the ageless Bernard Hopkins. Martinez took some abuse from the champ, but gave a lot better than he got, feeling comfortable enough about his margin on the scorecards to showboat a little bit and play with Kelly as he made him bleed. "Maravilla" picked up a belt and some fame, and turned his attention to avenging his controversial and narrow loss to Paul Williams.
Paul "The Punisher" Williams had earned himself the moniker of "the most avoided man in boxing," having lost only once in a career that included big name scalps like Margarito and Ronald Wright. He was considered as a strong candidate by some to hand either Mayweather or Pac-Man their first career losses, assuming he didn't manage to tumble them out of the ring, a la in his last engagement with Kermit Cintron.
It took Martinez two rounds and one punch to send Paul Williams to sleep. It was easily the best and cleanest knockout of the year. If anyone had been ducking Martinez until now, it was fair to say that they were not going to change their minds any time soon. His next fight would be against an undefeated European champion whose flawless record belied an orthodox, almost robotic, fighting style.
Some people thought Dzinziruk's clinical method might throw off Martinez's rhythm, but it was not to be. Martinez methodically carved Serhiy as if he was a statue and Martinez possessed a chisel in either one of his gloves. It was over in eight rounds. To recap, Martinez, who had fought from about 145 lbs. to 160 lbs (15 lbs. of range for those of you counting at home) had taken two belts from two champions, while destroying the man that most believed had a shot to beat the two best fighters on the face of the Earth.
Getting to Pacquiao, his last three fights have been impressive, but not impressive enough for those who wouldn't accept anything less than a Mayweather super-fight. His systematic destruction of Miguel Cotto was a warrior's display, even more vicious than the one Margarito had handed Miguel, and Pacquiao's victory lacked the taint of possibly tampered gloves. His next fight was against Joshua Clottey, who many thought could give Pacquiao serious problems. Clottey had beaten Zab Judah and the ever-durable Diego Corrales.
He had come very close in many eyes to beating Miguel Cotto. Pacquiao had been beaten and knocked out before. The feeling was it could happen again.
Joshua Clottey blamed a bad batch of okra and bowel troubles for his lackluster performance, and the fans felt cheated. Through no fault of his own, it seemed like Pacquiao had wasted a fight date, which is crucial for a marquee name that only boxes two or three times a year and is expected to bring in people who otherwise don't even watch the sport.
Pac-Man rounded the year out with his third one-sided win in a row, against an older and six times-beaten fighter who many people believe should have been banned from boxing for the rest of his life. Now, Pacquiao's next fight is against another man with a heap of losses and a lot of years behind him in Shane Mosley. In Mayweather's run-up to his own fight with Mosley, comedian Chris Rock ribbed him by saying "Shane Mosley? Everybody's beaten Shane Mosley." It was a joke, but there is truth in humor, and like a toothache that won't go away, it only serves to remind diehards that Shane Mosley is not Floyd Mayweather, and the endless debate, the name-calling between fans ("Flomos," "Pac-tards," etc.) will unfortunately continue until the two actually fight.
Regardless of whether Pacquiao ever fights Floyd, his ability to compete from roughly 107 lbs (!) to 145 lbs over the course of his career shows a range that is more than twice the wiggle room that Martinez can manage. But it isn't a range that Pacquiao has managed lately, and the pound-for-pound rankings are not a lifetime achievement award, but a question of what have you done for me lately?
Putting this question to Mayweather is problematic. He retired, then unretired, and has only fought twice in the last two years. Make no mistake, though, his win against Juan Manuel Marquez was meaningful, despite the bizarre HBO 24-7 build-up (where Marquez drank an unsavory alternative to Gatorade) and despite complaints about Mayweather picking on a little guy. People forget, as Mayweather was only too willing to remind them, that Mayweather too started out as a little guy, and that he disassembled Marquez like no one had before. Mayweather is sharper defensively than Pacquiao and he takes fewer chances (which can be good or bad, depending on your preference). No one has defeated him yet, or honestly come close to really solving his shoulder-roll defense.
But the pound-for-pound list is not about raw ability either. It is result-oriented. And if you are going to fight only once per year, you need to make it count. Mayweather didn't. His next fight was against Shane Mosley, supposedly a gesture meant to silence critics who inexplicably thought he couldn't handle a bigger fighter, which was nonsense as he had already fought the bulky Carlos Baldomir and was willing to meet De La Hoya at 154 lbs. Of course, neither Baldomir nor De La Hoya had Shane's speed, but Mayweather has already short-circuited his fair share of sprinters. Like Pacquiao's outing against Clottey, Mayweather's win against Mosley was something of a wasted night and a foregone conclusion.
Considering all of the above factors, Martinez deserves to at least be in the number two slot. If Pacquiao and Mayweather ever did square off, line-makers would probably give Mayweather a slight edge due to his unblemished record and careful style. But he deserves to be dropped a slot or two on the list for inactivity.
Removing Mayweather from the picture, it now becomes a contest between Maravilla and Pac-Man. Who deserves the number one spot? It will rankle some tail-feathers, but it has to be said that both The Ring and the more technical, points-based Boxrec.com need to pay a little bit more attention to the fighter who is making more noise with his fists than with his fame. Pacquiao is a great ambassador for the sport and probably the most popular Filipino to ever live. Mayweather is a marketing genius who maximizes profit and minimizes risks whenever he's not dancing with stars or wrestling with the Big Show. But Sergio Martinez is boxing, and boxing better than anyone else on the face of the planet right now.