Rankings: Youth Over Experience at LinesMaker.com

Rankings: Youth Over Experience

Four of the top 10 fight­ers in the April Yahoo! Sports box­ing rank­ings are under 30 years old and have a com­bined record of 96–1 with 57 knockouts.

Andre Ward (23–0), ranked sev­enth and Tim­o­thy Bradley (27–0), a spot behind him at eighth, are each 27. Non­ito Don­aire (26–1), who is fourth, is 28 and Yuri­orkis Gam­boa (20–0), who enters the rank­ings at 10th, replac­ing Juan Manuel Lopez, is 29.

There are sev­eral other fight­ers of note who are under 30, such as Paul Williams (29), Gio­vani Segura (29), Lopez (27), Andre Berto (27), Abner Mares (25), Anselmo Moreno (25), Vic­tor Ortiz (24), Amir Khan (24), Mikey Gar­cia (23) and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (20).

The sheer num­bers of them are a sig­nal that, despite the fre­quent cries of the unini­ti­ated, the sport is healthy and faces a bright future.

Ward, Bradley, Don­aire and Gam­boa are likely to be in or around the Top 10 for sev­eral years, and clearly, the group of the other 10 fight­ers fig­ures to be in the hunt for Top 10 pound-for-pound spots for at least the next five years, if not more.

Bradley is the youngest mem­ber of the Top 10, about six months younger than Ward. But Ortiz, a man who received just one vote out of the 32 cast from box­ing writ­ers and broad­cast­ers around the world, may soon take that spot.

Ortiz took a lot of abuse prior to his fight on Sat­ur­day with Berto, in which Ortiz won the World Box­ing Coun­cil wel­ter­weight title with a unan­i­mous deci­sion in a hel­la­cious back-and-forth bat­tle. Ortiz was derided as soft and as a quit­ter, but Golden Boy Pro­mo­tions pres­i­dent Oscar De La Hoya, who has been pre­dict­ing great­ness for Ortiz for years, said the crit­i­cism hurt because it hit close to home.

“You can’t blame peo­ple for what they were say­ing about him, because they saw his actions up there in that ring and he gave them rea­son to ques­tion him,” De La Hoya said. “He has the power and the speed and the abil­ity to box. The only thing miss­ing was the determination.

“With young guys, you just never know when all of a sud­den it’s going to come together. Some­times, it doesn’t. But some­times, like on Sat­ur­day with Ortiz, all of a sud­den they fig­ure it out and then they gain con­fi­dence and go on a roll. It’s like in golf. Once a guy gets that first win, he is tough to beat and racks up a few more.”

De La Hoya said he rates Manny Pac­quiao the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, because Floyd May­weather Jr. is not active. If May­weather were active, De La Hoya said, he’d have May­weather first. He said Don­aire and Ser­gio Mar­tinez also belong in con­sid­er­a­tion for the top spot.

But he said not to be sur­prised if Ortiz is in the run­ning for that spot in the not-too-distant future.

“Vic­tor was tired of peo­ple talk­ing about him and call­ing him a quit­ter,” De La Hoya said. “He got fed up with it and decided to do some­thing about it. That’s what you want to see in a fighter. Now that he has done that and proven to him­self, you’re going to see the nat­ural tal­ent come out and he’s going to get bet­ter and bet­ter. When I talked to him after the fight, the first thing he said to me was that he made a lot of mis­takes. That’s impor­tant because he knows now what he needs to do.

“It’s excit­ing to me because box­ing has so many young guys who can fight and we can put them together and make all of these great fights. As box­ing fans, it’s good for us because we know there are a lot of super fights ahead of us.”

And with that, let’s take a look at the updated rank­ings. As a point of infor­ma­tion, May­weather will not be eli­gi­ble for next month’s poll because he will have been inac­tive for more than 12 con­sec­u­tive months.

1. Manny Pac­quiao
Points: 320 (32 of 32 first-place votes)
Record: 52–3-2 (38 KOs)
Title: WBO wel­ter­weight cham­pion
Last out­ing: W12 over Anto­nio Mar­gar­ito on Nov. 13
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 1
Up next: May 7 vs. Shane Mosley in Las Vegas
Analy­sis: Pac­quiao at the peak of his career

2. Ser­gio Mar­tinez
Points: 261
Record: 47–2-2 (26 KOs)
Title: WBC mid­dleweight cham­pion emer­i­tus
Last out­ing: TKO8 Sergiy Dzinziruk on March 12
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 3
Up next: Noth­ing sched­uled
Analy­sis: Why he has trou­ble get­ting TV dates is a great mystery

3. Floyd May­weather Jr.
Points: 243
Record: 41–0 (25 KOs)
Title: None
Last out­ing: W12 over No. 10 Shane Mosley on May 1
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 3
Up next:Noth­ing sched­uled
Analy­sis:Com­plet­ing his 12th con­sec­u­tive month of inactivity

4. Non­ito Don­aire Jr.
Points: 190
Record: 26–1 (18 KOs)
Title: WBC, WBO ban­tamweight cham­pion
Last out­ing: TKO2 over Fer­nando Mon­tiel on Feb. 19
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 4
Up next:Noth­ing sched­uled
Analy­sis: An arbiter will decide which pro­moter he is bound to

5. Juan Manuel Mar­quez
Points: 176
Record: 52–5-1 (38 KOs)
Title: WBA, WBO light­weight cham­pion
Last out­ing: TKO9 over Michael Kat­sidis on Nov. 27
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 4
Up next: Noth­ing sched­uled
Analy­sis: Talk­ing about fight with IBF 140-pound cham­pion Zab Judah

6. Wladimir Klitschko
Points: 120
Record: 55–3 (49 KOs)
Title: IBF, WBO heavy­weight cham­pion
Last out­ing: TKO10 over Samuel Peter on Sept. 11
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 8
Up next: June or July vs. WBA cham­pion David Haye
Analy­sis: Took 50–50 split to get Haye fight made

7. Andre Ward
Points: 119
Record: 23–0 (13 KOs)
Title: WBA super mid­dleweight cham­pion
Last out­ing: W12 over Sakio Bika on Nov. 27
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 7
Up next: May 14 vs. Arthur Abra­ham in Car­son, Calif.
Analy­sis: Now the clear favorite to win the Super Six

8. Tim­o­thy Bradley
Points: 116
Record: 27–0 (11 KOs)
Title: WBO super light­weight cham­pion
Last out­ing: TD10 over Devon Alexan­der in Pon­tiac, Mich., on Jan. 29
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing:6
Up next:Likely on July 23 vs. Amir Khan
Analy­sis:Fight with Khan will deter­mine supremacy at 140

9. Lucian Bute
Points: 56
Record: 28–0 (23 KOs)
Title: IBF super mid­dleweight cham­pion
Last out­ing: TKO10 Brian Magee on March 19
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: 10
Up next: Tuneup fight in sum­mer in Roma­nia
Analy­sis:A show­down with Super Six win­ner awaits if he keeps winning

10. Yuri­orkis Gam­boa
Points: 30
Record: 20–0 (16 KOs)
Title: IBF/WBA feath­er­weight cham­pion
Last out­ing: TKO4 Jorge Solis on March 26
Pre­vi­ous rank­ing: NR
Up next: Noth­ing sched­uled
Analy­sis: Lost big money pay­day when Juan Manuel Lopez was stopped

Oth­ers receiv­ing votes: Vitali Klitschko, 29; Bernard Hop­kins, 22; Pongsak­lek Won­jongkam, 16; Miguel Cotto, 13; Paul Williams, 11; Chris John, 6; Amir Khan, 6; Vic­tor Ortiz, 6; Juan Manuel Lopez, 5; Tomasz Adamek, 3; Gio­vani Segura, 3; Carl Froch, 2; Marco Huck, 2; Steve Cun­ning­ham, 1.

Vot­ing panel:Raul Alzaga, Primera Hora; Ron Borges, Boston Her­ald; Damian Cal­houn, Orange County Reg­is­ter; Mike Cop­pinger, free­lance; Andrew Eisele, About.com; Steve Far­hood, Show­time; Scott Fyfe, Sun­day Post, Scot­land; Thomas Ger­basi, BoxingScene.com; Nick Giongco, Manila Bul­letin; Car­los Gon­za­lez, Primera Hora; Randy Gor­don, Sirius/XM; Lee Groves, Ring Mag­a­zine; Thomas Hauser, Sec­onds Out; Rafael Her­nan­dez Brito, free­lance; Keith Idec, The Record; Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports; David Mayo, Grand Rapids Press; Franklin McNeil, ESPN.com; Gun­nar Mein­hardt, Die Welt; Marty Mulc­a­hey, MaxBoxing.com; Kieran Mul­vaney, Reuters; Peter O. Nel­son, free­lance; San­tos Perez, Miami Her­ald; Mar­tin Rogers, Yahoo! Sports; Michael Rosen­thal, RingTV.com; Lem Sat­ter­field, Boxingscene.com; Tim Smith, New York Daily News; Tim Starks, The Queens­bury Rules; Don Stein­berg, Wall Street Journal/Philadelphia Inquirer; T.K. Stew­art, BoxingScene.com; Dave Wein­berg, Press of Atlantic City; George Willis, New York Post.

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