Boxing

Teddy Atlas Stuns Boxing World With Surprising Pound-For-Pound Picks

Canelo Alvarez was left off yet another prestigious boxing loss after his most recent loss.
Grant Young|
Canelo Alvarez during a press conference on September 10, 2025.
Canelo Alvarez during a press conference on September 10, 2025. | IMAGO / Hoganphotos

Saul "Canelo" Alvarez has spent much of the past decade being considered the pound-for-pound king of boxing.

And this title was rightfully earned. After losing to Floyd Mayweather when he was 23 years old, Canelo rebounded by going undefeated for nearly nine years and beating legends of the sport like Miguel Cotto, Gennady Golovkin, and Amir Khan, to name a few.

In the process, he dominated the middleweight division for a time before moving up to super middleweight and becoming an undisputed champion there.

Because of this success, Canelo held the No. 1 spot in Ring Magazine's pound-for-pound rankings from November 2019 to May 2022. Then came Canelo's loss to Dmitry Bivol, which cost him that top spot. But many still considered him among the active greats, given that he was stepping out of his weight class to challenge the bigger Bivol.

CANELO ALVAREZ during a June 26, 2025 press conference.
CANELO ALVAREZ during a June 26, 2025 press conference. | IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire

Canelo managed to rebound from that loss by going on a six-fight win streak, though the three most recent ones were relatively uninspired performances. This made it so Canelo had fallen to No. 4 in the pound-for-pound rankings last July.

Then came his unanimous decision loss to Terence Crawford in September 2025, which cost Canelo all of his super middleweight belts. And because of this mediocre showing, there are questions about whether Canelo will be able to rebound.

Teddy Atlas Omits Canelo Alvarez From Pound-for-Pound List

On November 24, Ring Magazine revealed that Canelo had dropped out of their pound-for-pound fighter rankings for the first time in seven years.

He also fell out of boxing icon Teddy Atlas' most recent pound-for-pound rankings, which he revealed in his own November 24 X post:

  1. Usyk
  2. Crawford
  3. Inoue
  4. Bivol
  5. Bam
  6. Beterbiev
  7. Benavidez
  8. Stevenson
  9. Nakatani
  10. Haney

A lot of the reaction to this list from Atlas was that he didn't have Terence Crawford as his No. 1 pound-for-pound boxer, which caught many by surprise, considering what he did to Canelo. But others were quick to notice that Canelo was nowhere to be found, seemingly being replaced by Devin Haney after his dominant showing against Brian Norman Jr. over the weekend.

Ultimately, unless he can rematch and ultimately beat Crawford at some point in 2026, it's hard to imagine how Canelo can rebound and find his way back on any pound-for-pound list at this point in his career.

Then again, Canelo has already accomplished so much in the sport that he probably doesn't care.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young is a Staff Writer for On SI’s Boxing, New York Mets, Indiana Fever, and Women’s Fastbreak sites. Before joining SI in 2024, he wrote for various boxing and sports verticals such as FanBuzz and NY Fights. Young has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in creative writing with an emphasis on sports nonfiction from the University of San Francisco, where he played five seasons of Division 1 baseball. He fought Muay Thai professionally in Thailand in 2023, loves a good essay, and is driven crazy trying to handle a pitpull puppy named Aura. Young lives in San Diego and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.