MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Boxing Hardcores: Where does Lopez belong in P4P rankings after Loma win?

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Brian Campbell welcomes Rafe Bartholomew as the Boxing Hardcores address the fallout and pound-for-pound impact of Teofimo Lopez Jr.’s upset of Vasiliy Lomachenko. Where does Lopez deserve to be ranked? Should the more proven Lomachenko remain higher? The guys also debate the merits of how Lomachenko’s follow up shoulder surgery affected the fight and whether Lopez could gain anything from a rematch. --------------------------------- 'Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit: store.sho.com   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat  To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh yeah, we're back at it. Don't fall in love with a podcast that no longer exists. Luckily, this one does again. It's your boy, you should. He's a New York Times bestselling author, one of the best boxing writers in the game today. Rafe Bartholomew, my friend, my brother, my cohort, welcome back into the box. How is it, my friend? I'm pretty fired up, Brian. That was a big weekend. I know you've been talking about it nonstop.

I'm glad that you get to that, that I can come on and just junk everything up with my garbage takes. Okay. Put your junk in your junk there. Uh, please like the video subscribe. If you're coming to this show, the morning combat, Luke Thomas, myself for MMA, we are sprinkling more of that box each week. So enjoy what we do here. It's Rafe. It it's myself it's our third co-host of course the soundboard in itself that'll be a part of it you might be saying what is boxing hardcore what does that what does that even mean you are the boxing hardcore you're not regular fans that's who we are your fans who keep track of the sport week to week indeed okay so we're gonna get we're gonna have to get inside on you the soundboard's gonna going to be a big part of it. A little bit of ridiculousness here as Rafe and I reunite.

Rafe, we've been doing boxing podcasting between two weird white guys from the beginning, from back in the Grantland days in 2015. So we're well-credited, credentialed, and ready to go. All righty then. There we go. Let's loosen up a little bit here. Rafe Bartholomew we come this week to react of course to the to the overall fallout the hangover of what was a great fight for

the sport a bit you know a big gift to people in the box game Teofimo Lopez Jr. you already heard me break it down unanimous decision over Vasily Lomachenko maybe now has all four lightweight undisputed titles although I think I have to check the cop and pug show to hear Mike Coppinger send Mauricio to hell about the old franchise thing, but I want to get race reaction. Most importantly, we want to find out where Lopez now fits in, in this mythical boxing pound for pound top 10.

Look, I care about this to me. This is the true currency of the sport. It's not just two white guys in their basements. Rafe pound for pound matters to me this is the true currency of the sport it's not just two white guys in their basements Rafe pound for pound matters to me because it's the only way we can sort of compare in a sport where there's different divisions the best don't always face the best a lot of that a lot of what happens is up here right right you know we take images we build material for later you know what I'm talking about and we just sort of have matchup Mondays and decide who's better, who's best. That's what the pound for pound is all about, bro.

Okay. A little devil's advocate, BC. Some might say that pound for pound is just a marketing ploy, that it's a mythical list. Fights that most of the time don't happen often in many cases are impossible because they're they reflect fighters in weight classes you know 50 pounds apart from each other and it's just something that we in the media do to spark up a little bit of interest uh spice up a week when we got nothing else going on piss off our our viewers and our listeners and our readers and let them call us idiots for getting, say, Naoya Inoue one ranking too low or something of the sort.

But that's not how I feel, Brian. I love me some pound-for-pound rankings, all right? So I'm ready to get in it. Not just guys in their basement where I am right now, okay? It's currency in this sport. You did mention sparking it up and box my advice to everybody who's scared to death is smoke a lot of weed thank you very much bob hopefully rave you did see that that bob interview with uh with the with the british guy where somebody in the background was playing techno music and bob

he's like you're the mob me love shut that, shut that shit off. Great, great moments in Bob Arum history right there. Oh, let's not beat around the bush anymore, though, Rafe. I want to get right into it. People want to hear your take. They've heard enough of my voice. Lopez upsets Lomachenko. We had Lomachenko as high as number one pound for pound coming in. I had him number two.

He'd been right around my number one forever. Your thoughts on what I would have to be a surprising outcome there yeah brian it was uh i mean i loved the fight i know that the first six rounds were very slow largely due to the way vasily lomachenko approached the fight and didn't feel comfortable engaging really at the in the first half and gave away most of the fight right there um but just seeing that happen something that we had never seen, something that I didn't even anticipate because I, I didn't, I, I, I knew how dangerous Teofimo Lopez was going into this fight.

I believed that. I also believed that Vasily Lomachenko knew and believed those facts too, but no part of me thought that his initial response to that, or if it was a game plan or just how he read the moment, was going to be to be so inactive, to throw less than 10 punches in many of the first six rounds, to basically just protect, stay out of the pocket, not engage. On that topic right there

hit pause on your take yeah why did vasily lomachenko a guy who's sort of known for taking the lead he's not the traditional jab jab right hand counter he's a southpaw magician why oh for six and a half seven rounds was he you know basically sterile out there? You know, sometimes overnight, you know, you get a little older and you just can't get it up anymore. I don't know if that's full on sterility, but it can it can affect your performance in a big moment. And we did see that with Lomachenko. But Brian, seriously, I think it was a mixture of of of factors here i don't think that was his game plan i think that if lomachenko senses he can go in and do work he's going to do that so it was what teofimo lopez did to to to tell to signal to his opponent lomachenko in the rim don't come in here because i got some trouble waiting for you all right and and lomachenko's feeling that he was now a lot of the punches early in the fight from Teofimo Lopez,

except for that right to the body. You know, I think Lomachenko was blocking a lot of them, was not really getting hit clean, but he still could feel the power behind them and could sense the quickness, the reflexes, the ability of Lopez to catch him coming in if he tried that, if he decided to step on the gas and take the risks that he took later in the fight earlier. Now, on one hand, I think, and we were wondering going into this fight, how are Lopez's advantages in size and strength and overall athleticism? I mean, Lomachenko is an incredible athlete.

Lopez is a nuclear, once-in-a-generation crazy athlete who also can box. You don't think that the guy's doing backflips off of one leg. That doesn't help you in a boxing ring that much. Who's a test man, right? Lomachenko is the test man. He's not the machine. I mean, he's like Brady, right? He i mean is the test man he's not the machine i mean he's brady right he's kind of like peyton manning quarterback he's brady he's montana sorry about that which which brings me to the second half of that point which is that even though i could understand why loma chenko you know felt saw sensed danger and decided not to engage early or really for

half or more of the fight. I was still disappointed that he didn't because this is Vasily Lomachenko. And no matter how good the man across from him is, I expected him to have the confidence and the ability to go in and do more under difficult circumstances to fight on even terms, to not concede the middle of the ring, to not concede those rounds to, to actually try. So,

okay, this is harder than anything I've ever faced. This is not, this ain't going to be easy, but still go. And, and I think you saw later in the fight when he did engage because it was getting so late, he had no choice.

He did very well. He did finish like a man, straight up. He figured out the angles. He took the chances. He bit down. He landed the bigger punches in the second half, save for the ending of the 12th round. Right.

I think that he should have tried that earlier. I think he should have started round three, round four, round five. I know that's easy to say. And I know that also exposes him to a probably much higher chance of getting knocked out, getting hurt badly in a way that changes the rest of the fight. But still, what he did felt like hesitancy, felt like not really trying to win, not giving himself a chance. It was like Mikey Garcia against Errol Spence,

hiding behind his jab the whole night and just trying to survive. Boxing Floyd Mayweather in the late rounds when he's down 10 to nothing on our scorecards, all the CJ Ross, that woman judged. Please, that's why i'm upset to end quote teddy atlas right there uh i want to bring up one of the best quotes that we play on our show often here from errol smith we good friends i love you daddy but let's get it out we love papa chenko we love anatoly loma chenko the the ukrainian trainer to the stars people have asked loma what's the secret to your style?

Is it the Ukrainian traditional dance? No, it's not. I think his secret is Papachenko. Well, not on this night, Rafe. Do you throw the same level of shade and criticism that I did at Papachenko for rounds four and five telling his son you got it chill you're good calm down i mean did is it as easy to say the reason why he gave away the first half of that fight was 50 that that lopez was faster and more accurate than the lomachenko's thought and 50

that they just thought if we wait around he's gonna f up and screw up this kid's gonna blow it you're blowing it kid right no one got blown rave oh unfortunately not but um brian i think it look that's bad advice that's that that was bad cornering he was wrong i don't blame i put more the blame the blame and the glory goes to the actual fighter, not his corner. It's Lomachenko. Lomachenko was in there. He's been fighting his entire life, more in his amateur career, right? He's had a relatively abbreviated professional career, but has accomplished a ton, a shitload in that amount of time, Brian. And if he couldn't figure out that he was losing those rounds,

and I know, look, a fighter is proud. A fighter will say what he says in his interviews afterwards. I don't, I'm not upset that he's like, oh, I think I won, whatever. But deep inside, if he didn't know that he was losing those rounds, that he didn't do enough to win them, then I don't know what's wrong with him.

And so I honestly, I think it's Lomachenko's fault or if it's not his fault, it's the decision he made. And if he thought that he'd be able to turn it up enough to stop Lopez late or to maybe force a close decision victory, he severely miscalculated, not just because of waiting too late to get started, but underestimating how good Lopez would be and how Lopez would eventually respond in that incredible 12th round that Lopez had to kind of seal the deal and put his stamp on that fight. You know, and I do think it's all of those things, but I don't think it's as easy as, well, by round seven,

Lomachenko decided, okay, I've given up enough. I got to go for it. It may have taken him seven rounds, Rafefe with Lopez slowly losing stamina for him to feel comfortable that the opening was actually there and that's a credit to the kid right you gotta fight with the Thailand guy no this is Honduran guy uh with a Thailand guy and the Honduran guy could fight Lomo so that's what we found out before I get your score before we transition into pound for pound, you know, the news as we record this today is that Lomachenko had shoulder surgery after this fight, that he went to Dr. El Atraj, the shoulder man for the stars.

Same guy who did Manny before Manny healed himself, swimming in the seas south of General Santos City swimming with the Tunas you know Loma had history in the past after the Linares fight with shoulder issues remember it was before the one of the two but you know it was a problem and now you're getting Agus Clemens coming out and uh not talking about preparing his whores right coming out and saying we needed the injection before the fight we had an issue it's sour grace it's after the fact if you want to heal yourself like manny did when he didn't try to knock out mayweather just jump in the salt water but do you put any extra stock in this is there an excuse built in i mean what do you got

here with this no it doesn't matter and also he didn't fight like he was nursing a a badly injured shoulder he let both hands go when he got into range. He landed significant punches with them, punches that it looked like Teofimo Lopez felt and was bothered by. And at times felt was, was even a little bit hurt and dazed by. So I know, I don't think so.

And even if it was, I mean, this is, this is the story in boxing and in professional sports in general athletes. Well, they sleep with a lot of women, as Paulie once told us. 2013, yes. Some things are eternal, Brian. But no, athletes, they're often hurt.

They're often dinged up, and they go in and still perform at a world-class level. Vasily Lobachenko did that too. It just wasn't enough. He lost the fight. That's it. All right. All right. Well, let's get to the scoring real quick. I had it one 16, one 12. I incorrectly in the instant analysis, I had it 17. So I did eight to four. We, you know, some people, Andre Ward gave you a borderline call frost scorecard that I was

looking for all the 10 tens where he's going to light it up in there. He had a one 14. Even I found a lot more people that did have it fairly close where they thought Lopez winning that last round won the whole thing. Turns out it was wider. It was 116, 112, 117, 111. And then Julie Letterman entered the picture at 119, 109. So, Rafe, we tried to get her on the pod today to talk about this, to break this down, but you specifically have

a rule on this podcast as a person i'm gonna make you my girlfriend no not that rule mike tyson this one i normally don't do any of you when the letter is not part of the equation so she's not here but you know rave look we're playing jokes with great sounding history if you're new to the show um you know you want to get teddy upset about cj ross about adolescent bird about julie letterman that woman judge who had it even please please that's why i'm on fire because i started thinking about her because i started thinking about her you let her drive a vote uh ray how much does you know she would take the keys away from from the daughter of the great uh Letterman here? How bad is that scorecard in your eyes?

Where did you fall in the spectrum? Because Teofimo Sr. said, Julie Letterman was the only one who seemed to sum it up right. I thought it was a shutout. Brian, I got to tell you, Brian, you know, Julie Letterman had this scorecard, Brian. I don't know what she was doing. She, I mean, she's like a living caricature of her late great father, Harold Letterman, the unofficial score for HBO Boxing all those years. And you know

Harold, he liked the, he favored the aggressive fighter. But this is, this is that on steroids. This is that beyond any comprehension. So be as it may, let's send her to boxing hell. Okay, Jim. Seven rounds to two. Thank you.

All right. How did you score this one? So this is where I invite the ridicule of you, our listeners, our friends on Twitter. Don't do it. Don't do it. First of all, you have no grounds to even go here. Don't even go here with me with all the score.

You're the king of the bad scorecard, BC. 115-113, Thurman over Pacquiao. It's in play, okay? 114-112, Trout over Canelo. I saw it. It happened, bro, okay? People are trying to say it didn't exist at the end of the day. It did exist.

It did happen. We both know it didn't exist. Okay, so don't tell me. You know how you will break my heart. If you tell me, oh, I wasn't really scoring. I was just drinking a beer and it looked like Loma one.

I like, don't, what do you, what do you got? It definitely didn't look like Loma one to me, but scoring round by round and not look, did I put in a ton of effort? Was I treating it like it mattered?

No, but I still was keeping it in my head. So I, I will, I will eat whatever comes to me for this i and i felt bad when it happened i had the andre ward draw a scar scorecard exactly brian and look the rounds two and seven i felt were were both real dicey for that scorecard and i at the time i was giving them to loma kind of i was doing that thing was like well you know let's let's let's make this a little interesting right i was i was trying to but i so there was really that rounds eight through

eleven when you're looking at your phone you're like ah who cares it's only these guys lives at stake right oh look i ain't I ain't a real judge. And the real judges, I think, were worse, less justifiable, or at least in Julie Letterman's case, less justifiable than that scorecard. I think, look, Max Kellerman, some people are big fans of Max's. Some people are not. He does know boxing. I have agreed with the way he has discussed the scoring on Twitter and that

there were basically 10 very clear rounds in the fight. The four that, that Lomachenko swept, whether that would be eight through 11 and then everything else to Teofimo Lopez, except two and seven. And look, both of those,

I was like, I'm giving this to Loma, but I don't know if I really, I don't think he's actually going to get, get them on a real judges scorecards. and he didn't, but there was, he, whatever I did, what I did, it's too late. I'm not taking it back. It's too late. I did it. If you add it six, six, I'm not going to, I mean, can you read, can you,

can you read my lips here? If my lip reading is correct, he called him a bitch. I wasn't going that far. Right. Right. But I will will tell you that uh i mean like at the end of the day if we're two rounds off that's why boxing scoring is like the people going nuts about boxing scoring is more even sometimes more ridiculous than the actual score you know what we didn't get here we didn't get typical boxing we didn't get we didn't get one 18 110 for loma chanko right it wasn't like a split decision win for lopez and you're like good god they paid off that other guy now there are some people that certainly can make

the boxing conspiracy argument if judges are paid off which i'm not here to say although we have seen it we have seen it i know we've seen it uh that that well maybe they thought lopez is the long-term money guy so he got the wide scorecard on purpose i'm not even here to say that the rounds were kind of close like even though lopez we're gonna say dominated the first seven rounds of the fight and even though he did by the way land body shots that that changed the the course of that fight and kind of swell up loma's face i think you would agree with me rave that he wasn't like overwhelmingly dominating what he was doing was taking the only things Loma was giving him and saying, I'm content and poised enough to score with these things you're giving me

and be fine winning the rounds like that. So if you threw around a Lomachenko or two even in that stretch because you said, well, he did better than he did earlier, which sometimes people fall victim to, you can't put somebody in the fire for that. This ain't Joan of Arc, right? I hope not. I'm not trying to get burned at a stake. All right.

Is there any other famous burnings I should think about? Wasn't Jason burned a few times in the Friday the 13th films? Yeah, probably. It didn't hurt him, though. Richard Pryor, a famous burning. Do you agree with this characterization? No. The hipster idea coming in was that, you know,

this may end up looking like Mayweather Canelo, where Lopez just isn't ready and he carries out a bad game plan or he loses his poise. Turns out that was not the case. There were some smart people ahead of time who said, I think it may look a little bit more like Oscar and Cornell Whitaker. But I had a good boxing friend of mine, Chris Mettler, who texted me right after the old school fan of the Saved by the Boxing Chat, by the way, ESPN.com back. What up, Igor?

Chris said, look, we thought we were getting Joe Calzaghe, Jeff Lacey. And instead, we got Bernard Hopkins, Jermaine Taylor won. I think he kind of nailed it, right? I like that. I like that. Going in last week, I did think that the Calzaghe-Lacey scenario was a possibility. Look, to people who thought that Lomachenko was going to be too much, that Lopez was too inexperienced, wasn't ready to deal with that. That's not, that was not an outrageous take going into this fight, nor were, nor was the take

that Lopez with his power and reflexes, speed, all of that was going, would, would, would flatten Loma, would knock him out. Neither of those things happened, but those were well within the range of reasonable predictions because there was so, boxing doesn't always give you a lot to work with. These two fighters each only had 15 pro fights coming into this fight. And Lopez especially, other than Richard Comey, hadn't fought anybody really that could tell us anything about how he might do. And he blew him away, right? Is Diego Magdaleno the only quasi elite win he had before way late in I mean did I Diego Magdaleno is is down from quasi elite

to big gatekeeper status by the time you know Teofimo got to him looking and handsome too as well please all right uh let's transition into this now we we laid the foundation this had a chance to really shake up the pound for pound rankings most people had lomachenko one two or three coming in lopez obviously unranked it's always hard to gauge when somebody doesn't have the resume to equal the eye test we went through that with galovkin for years but then they go f around and beat one of the top two or three guys and you're like what do we do when sri saket soarungvisai went from eating rats in in uh holding up the uh the boom box to uh to peter gabriel's uh you know and that

was a say anything was a movie um and then he went and left around and beat chocolatito i put him at like seven or eight then when he went and knocked out chocolatito in the rematch it was like this guy might be a top five or six fighter in the world um i want to add break this down in increments here i just published on cbssports.com my updated pound for pound top 10 uh you've got your own as well but let's just start with this basis does a win and it was it was close but convincing from both of our viewpoint although you did have it a draw but you get what i'm saying no but i still look it was one of those things where i scored round by round and came out with a score i was like oh man i somebody got the score wrong my eye my eyes told me something else you know i mean i'm not i don't

always have that feeling i don't agree with the part about me being horny all hours of the day two hours in the day too uh do you think that victory 100%, regardless of where he is in your top 10, pushes this man, Teofimo Lopez, into the top 10, no doubt? Yeah, top 10, I cannot see an argument for keeping him out. He just convincingly beat the fighter that has been number one on almost everyone's list at some point in time in recent years, and who a lot of people still had as number one on almost everyone's list at some point in time in recent years and who a lot of people still had as number one and who i would have argued going into this fight was the most deserving number one still out there so yeah he deserves to be in the top 10 i think if we put him in and look brian this messes up there have been two fights you know it's weird in a in a year where you know

because of the pandemic boxing has not been able to have its normal schedule. There have been two fights that really threw gigantic monkey wrenches into pound-for-pound lists and rankings. First, Tyson Fury's win over Deontay Wilder, which was so eye-opening and made such a strong case that he had to be in there. But then it's like, what happens to Usyk if you think Usyk is better pound-for-pound

but wouldn't beat Fury at heavyweight? how the hell do you deal with that likewise with this lopez i think if you put him in there you can't put him i know you did this and i know a lot of people did this and i i look it's pound for pound so nothing is as long as you can back up your own idea it's good i think the people like screaming at each other online right now over very small differences are kind of silly but don't have vitamin klichko number one after floyd retires no one would ever do that brian no one ever would has anyone ever tried to do that i don't think so no and don't look at me it was was that damn Sasquatch that ate all the kids' lunches. But the way I look at it, Brian,

if you're going to put Teofimo Lopez into your top 10, and I think you need to, you also can't put him behind Vasily Lomachenko because he, I know you did, but he just beat Lomachenko. So how do you do that? I peeped a lot of top 10s as I was compiling mine as I'm watching. A lot of guys. Complex, Ring Magazine.

Complex? Who gives a... Complex? It just happened to pop up. They have Boxing at Complex? The thing is that you're saying is when it comes to doing your... Do you still wear Echo Unlimited? Why are we talking about Complex? I don't look at things, right? I've looked at a lot of guys. You know you want to you know let's look at the entire man thank you

richard dwyer and when i when i found the guy there was something i wanted when i came in right and it's specifically right beautiful guys so jokes aside um people have different needle leanings on pop for pound and what it means to them i've always been a guy who says your resume gets you in although you can get in you know if the eye test is overwhelming but it's more the eye test it's more the traditional of who would be who in a mythical match that allows you to jump up you know that's why i think when there's an aging champion who's accomplished everything, but he's starting to slow down and not look great. You don't you don't keep him at number three or four just because of that.

You can slide him down because it's about right now. Right. So I get that there's different debates or criteria here. But everybody has Lopez now higher than Lomachenko. And on the surface, that makes sense. Head to head. They met in the same weight class and you just beat them. I may be the only guy who still has Lomachenko higher than

Lopez. And here's my take on that. Number one, we have such a small sample size for Lopez against, I mean, not to disrespect, he fought the right guys. Top break matchmakers are genius. He fought the right guys at the right time and blew them away. But as we just talked about, it's Richard Comey. It was whatever was left of Magdalenoeno and then there's a lot of rock hard mighties Mason Maynard's in there so we just have really one instance or one and a half if you count the Comey fight on how truly elite he really is now for his favorite for his credit if Lopez had knocked out Lomachenko in round two I don't think he would get to say as much respect as having seen him go 12 and react and have poise and have a game plan and have everything but he

only has that one little window that we saw and lomachenko did rally late to have people like you have an argument for a close fight and the flip side of that is lomachenko like canelo is in a lot of ways the true definition of pound for pound. He can do it over multiple weight classes where that doesn't catch up with him. So while he just may have lost to a guy in Lopez who might be the best lightweight in the world right now in an absolutely loaded lightweight division tomorrow, Lomachenko can go back to one 30 in my eyes, right?

Not loaded. Don't even do that. It's not loaded. Loaded with potential. Yes, I'll go with that. Brian Garcia, Devin Haynes. Loaded with potential of guys who aren't going to be at lightweight for more than two years. Because Lomachenko can go back and right tomorrow could be the best 130-pound fighter in the world, and if he could still make it, you'd probably favor him to beat featherweight, even though there's always great featherweights out there. I think that is enough in my eyes because lomachenko did make the right adjustments he just

started late bro and he didn't get battered the first seven he just got beat i think that until we see a little bit more from lopez i got lomachenko higher is that a crime in this mythical bs pound for pound that i still think has merit and value, which is why I care about it. Do you think that's a crime? Look, some people think that's a crime. I think that's fair. You just argued, you made a argument that makes sense, that like has coherence to it for why you think that. And I get it. And in a lot of ways, the thing I like about what you've done is that by not forcing yourself to put Lopez over Lomachenko, because it's like, okay, like you said, it was a fairly close fight, or it could have been, you know, some, it was not a complete whitewashing.

And do you don't look at that and say, man, I want to drop Lomachenko out altogether or much further past five, six, seven in that range. And by not forcing yourself to put Lopez above him, then you don't run into the problems I ran into when I was trying to, you know, I just tried to throw together a list to see what I would do based on what I used to have. And by putting, if I said, I said to myself, all right, I don't think Lomachenko really deserves to go lower than five. Well, then I have to make Lopez four.

Well, if that's the case, and I have Canelo and Bud Crawford in the one and two spots, that means either Errol Spence or Inouye or some other extremely, extremely elite fighter is going to get jacked all the way down to six. And that doesn't look right either. So we're in kind of like an impossible pound for pound moment. As long as you are someone thinking about it with a clear brain, you know, just,

just do whatever, you know, do whatever makes sense to you. And if you agree or disagree with somebody's list, then at the end of the day. So I think you're right. Cause look,

we are at a rare time. And I've talked about this last, last year in pound for pound, where I believe that there are four to five guys with a legitimate case where normally it's one, two, and maybe a hipster third, if you're lucky. I mean, there's, there's a lot of guys short of, you know, well, Machinko exiting that conversation that had a claim. So let's get into it here in terms of where we went with it and all that. I'm going to tell you first, Rafe, who's the honorable mention? Who's on the

outside looking in on my list? Are you ready for this? I am ready, Weaver. I only want you to stop me if it's egregious in your eyes, okay? Okay. Leo Santa Cruz, honorable mention. Look, honorable mention? I'd be fighting you if he was top 10. Matty Golovkin, honorable mention.

That's fine. That's fine. Jose Ramirez. Oh, yeah. Tty Golovkin, I will mention. That's fine. That's fine. Jose Ramirez. Oh, yeah. Tartan Tornado, Josh Taylor. Okay. Jermel Charlo. I think there's a strong argument right now for Jermel being solidly in the back end, like in the 8 to 10 range.

It took me a minute to realize it, but resume he's got three but look at me max i have three belts kazakhstan forever except in houston texas you already know he's the best brian and uh seriously though besides reciting sound bites that your viewers may not actually even know uh pop off the hook for you saying that I just find that all incredibly hypocritical. Finally. I don't give a goddamn mother F what in a donut what that person. Brian, Jermel Charlo, he's got the resume. I think that looking at my list,

I probably would take Beterbiev out and replace him with Charlo. As great, I think Beterbiev is great. would take uh better bf out and replace him with with with charlo as great i think better better bf is great but honorable mention arthur better be okay okay for the vodzik knockout i had him in there he just so happened to get bumped out not to his doing he delayed his october return due to injury we're probably going to see him against b-ball next year he's probably going to win in a great fight it'll probably be back in this top 10 no just love the man my last honorable mention juan francisco estrada who he turned friday uh in a rematch with carlos back knee quadris and oh by the way rave he's been in and out of my top 10 for like seven years why why because i know this game right right brother

i'm calling my shot over here. So you're good with that. You're ready for me to break down the top 10. Yeah, do it. Do it. Lay it on me. Here we go. Number 10, Rafe, Jermall Charlo.

I thought from that Charlo pay-per-view, which both were stepping up to the top level for not the first time, but for Jermall really at middleweight for the first time, Derevyanchenko was elite. He brought it to him. And the fact that Jamal was able to make so many adjustments, hold the distance, not fold when the fight got rough and is the perfect embodiment in my

mind, in a classic historic division of the balance between speed, size, power, athleticism, IQ, boxing ability, all that.

Right. He finally has the stamp at 160 that he was the guy he was at 54 i don't see how you can hold i don't see how you can have a top 10 without either charlo basically at 11 or 10 or right there you know what i'm saying well that is correct but my friend you picked the wrong charlo i look i i may i think i agree with you overall that who do I think deep in my boxing soul is the better fighter? And he, man, was that performance against Derevyanchenko impressive last month. But, Brian, here's, or was it earlier this month? I don't even care when it was.

But, Brian, you can't, you can't, you said earlier, resume gets you on the list. Well, just that one really good win and the earlier win against J. Rock Williams. All right, that's pretty good. But compared to his twin brother, Jermell has such a better resume. He has many, many good wins, more belts. He's earned it right now. And I think Jermell probably will go on to be better honestly i don't even see how the way he looked against dervyanchenko i was thinking about this i don't

even know how you go about beating jamal charlo right now but exactly like when he says i'm the best middleweight in the world and obviously would love to see him against canelo he he might not be wrong and part of that is because we don't know if canelo is still a middleweight another thing is i gotta see canelo beat him not you know i gotta see it happen i gotta see it and don't discount the core bump win all right carbo was about 38 and the drunk yeah but he was tough that night the difference right now real quick i think jermel doesn't project himself the best he can be because he's too in love with headhunting and it lowers his punch output and even though he dominated banana rosario had that fight gone the distance,

the punch separation between them would have been so wide. All right. So we got to, we got to, you know, we got to keep going here. Here we go. Sliding on from here. Number nine, tail female Lopez jr. I've seen people have them as high as four or five or six, nine. Okay. With you. Well, I think he should be higher i think i in my i think i understand how you're doing it but i would have him above wherever i put loma chanko i'm putting him one above uh loma chanko okay okay we move on from there and look i gotta see

maybe we see a rematch and maybe it'll be more competitive or maybe he chocolate tito's him like ssr in the rematch and i don't know We'll find out on that. Number eight, Tyson Fury. Now look, I'm always the guy who doesn't put a heavyweight to my top 10 unless they really, really, really are dominant mixed with have such a good ability in the ring. Typically as a boxer, like I thought Lennox Lewis was top 10, right? Cause he could do everything. I didn't think Vladimir Klitschko was in a lot of ways because in the mythical mindset of your head if you put him in there against a guy more skilled from a lower weight class in the mythical division they're gonna beat him i think tyson

fury's special i think he belongs in here right now he is special i i still tyson fury is the fighter that convinced me to take heavyweights out of my list because he just, it just blows the whole thing up right now. Here's the only, here's the big flaw that I all, we already see coming with the Brian Campbell list. It's that you have two fighters ranked above guys who you don't think, or we already know wouldn't, they wouldn't beat in their own divisions. You have Usyk over Tyson Fury. We think that we probably would favor Fury in that fight and I love me some some Alexander Usyk I I have six kebabs

in my house I love him but I don't I don't I wouldn't pick him over Fury at this time likewise we just saw Lomachenko fail his own test making against Lopez? And how are you going to have both of them ahead? I'm going to counter you. Usyk did his pound-for-pound work at cruiserweight. He only has one heavyweight fight, and you can't really count that in the equation because he fought a Chaz Witherspoon.

He fought a nobody. So we're still judging him on the cruiserweight until he shows up at heavyweight against Chisora. If he don't look good, if he ain't a real heavyweight, he's going to slide. So right now, he's still the guy that beat Double Kebab on his own. Bell, you, BC on the call. Got to keep moving here. All right.

Number seven, Manny Pacquiao. Normally, after a year of inactivity, we pull guys from the list. That's the rule. If you don't have a fight scheduled, the COVID blew everything up there. but i don't know if he's injecting his calves if he is keep doing it because what he did against keith thurman last july he still he still got it so i got it he deserved to be there i think look i would listen to an argument taking him off because when we do we actually expect him to be in a meaningful fight again whenever no if he's trying to make a fight with conor mcor, that's not a real fight.

And then he might retire with a boatload of money, and that's it. I have a theory real quick. This is not based on connections, news breaking. Can Teofimo go up and fight Manny? I would love that. That's the Teofimo fight I want and need. People are like, can we make it happen with Haney? I don't know.

Right? I don't know. No, they can't. It ain't happening. Probably not. So a low rematch is a good chance. Also a good chance he moves up to 140. haney i don't know right i don't know no they can't it ain't happening probably not so low much rematches is is a good chance also a good chance he moves up to 140 and they they say why are we gonna f around with william again maybe that wizard could figure this out i don't know

manny is the fight to make but real quick uh dana white is you know he's constantly threatening to announce what if you know i here's another one i want i'm sorry i'm talking to this man like i'm man all right all right Dana said he got a big announcement coming we know he wants to make Manny Connor we know Manny just officially signed with Connor's management team I'm wondering if Dana's big foray big announcement what if he got Mikey Garcia who tends to be a free agent and matched him with Manny that's a fight we kind of almost saw happen a lot over the last year. We know both are free agents.

What if that's the fight Dana's looking to do? If that's your Zufa boxing launch, you could do a lot worse, right? If that's actually a good fight. It'll be all downhill after that, but Zufa boxing, but if they can make that fight happen, I'd love to see it. Oh, I also want to say I would even be down for Teofimo Lopez to go up and fight terrence crawford all right he he already put his balls on the line he could keep doing it it'd be it would be like

shane mosley moving up two divisions and beat an oscar it would be wild but he's ballsy we know that i don't know how much longer he can make 35 i get alexander usic number six for all the reasons we mentioned number five vasily lomachenko and i'm showing him a lot of respect for that i know it here's the top four and again i think this top four it literally could be in any order rafe although i think a lot of people are disrespecting big red right now for me it's number four errol spence jr number three terence crawford number two the japanese monster niowa a new way and then canelo number one quickly i tell you, the reason why I put Inoue above both welterweights is because Spence has a lot of explaining to do, although we don't judge your pound for pound

on how we think you may not look when you come back, right? But Crawford, I'm sorry, like, he just doesn't have the resume. It's just not enough elites there. You can blow away B and B plus all day. There just ain't enough elites there. You can blow away B and B plus all day. There just ain't no elites there. So if I'm fine tune, fine comb comparing the Japanese monster keeps moving up, wait and wait and keep sending dudes to hell.

And he did survive. No need. Okay. Jaren's data. He did survive him. So a new way is number two. And if you don't have Canelo number one right now, I got a problem with you.

Brian, it hurts me to, to agree with you on that because I have been trying to stop Canelo from being as great as he has been through my voodoo dolls and everything else. I've got Joe Boo cooking up in one locker. I've got the woman from March for Death putting out cigars on the other side, and the man just keeps on performing. Even the Canelo pick, it's tough because that's a guy who I know you have scored at least two, maybe three fights against. So there's this side of you that's like, yeah, he does have the best resume, but I don't even think he won all the fights that he has on his resume.

I held it against him for a while. I scored trout against him. Few people did. I scored Laura against him. Half the people did. I scored triple G against them both times. And I scored the Danny Jacobs fight a draw with people thought I was losing it. It's good. That was a close fight. It was a close fight. It's just, he's now, he's now embodying pound for pound, winning titles at 68, 75. So at this point, his adjustments, his growth, his everything, Rafe. Canelo's the best fighter in the world at this moment. If you have Crawford, I'm not going to kill you. If you have Inouye, I'm not going to kill you.

Spence is also in that discussion. But I'm glad as a ginger. And by the way, I thought your jacket there said. It says Hinebra henebra lahing henebra you know um i thought that it was you know ginger friendly and i know that that's something that you shy away from but the women like that right i do like ginger i do i love ginger what you like

buddy i like money. Cowboy Carl, the ginger, coming back on the Tank Davis undercard. We got to wrap this soon, but any major differences in your list to mine that you want to bring up? Instead, Brian, I want to throw a hypothetical at you because there's another fight coming up on the horizon very near that has the potential to further blow up pound for pound lists. And I hope this isn't the case.

It's not what I want to see. But in the chance that Errol Spence isn't himself anymore after in his first fight back from that horrifying car crash that he was in after going out. Yeah, all that stuff. No seatbelt. If Danny Jacobs' thing comes back and he gives it to Spence, is that where you're going with this? Well, look, if Spence is not the same fighter and he loses to Danny Garcia,

how much credit does Danny Garcia get? Does Danny Garcia get to go into the pound-for-pound list? But if we clearly see that Errol Spence was not the Errol Spence of old, it's a real – boxing is in a pickle with that one. You realize, oh, that's Danny. It is Danny's night. I mean, believe that. I've got a lot of sound drops to tell you about Danny.

But, you know. John, this is Danny's night. Yeah, he's got to show up that night, win or lose. He's got to show up. And if he does and Danny wins, Danny's going to get the credit. Danny's great. People forget this. People forget because of the Goonies and the stupid masks

and the C. Angie twins and the cherry picking and the Salka fight and the Mauricio Herrera. The times he got beat by a couple other guys. I thought Peter Sabita, right? We saw that. We saw that. It did exist. It did exist.

Yeah, there's potential to shake it up. That's what we want. That's what we want. We want the shit and beat him, right? We saw that. We saw that. It did exist. It did exist. Yeah, there's potential to shake it up. That's what we want. That's what we want. We want the shit to be shaken, okay? Where Canelo's your king right now, that's what it is. Rafe, the more that these days go on, and we're going to wrap in a second, I want to see Lomachenko Lopez too. I want to see what happens if Lomachenko starts as daring,

not recklessly daring, but smart daring earlier, and let's say he believes he's figured something out, right? It does increase the odds that he gets stopped. And again, maybe he does like chocolate Cheeto, you know, Soros or rat guy part two, or maybe Lomachenko wins. I mean, I think it was a unique enough fight where it's not out of the question. It's probably the biggest money fight for both.

I just wonder again, if you're Team Lopez and you look at it, you go, not worth it. Not worth it. Well, I don't know if it's a not worth it. Look, they don't lack for confidence. I think that if that's the best opportunity they have early next year and Lomachenko will once again be coming off of a shoulder surgery.

So maybe that makes him just as easy to beat for, for Lopez. I don't know, but I would look, I would be happy with that rematch because like, just, it is interesting to me. I do want to see what would happen if Lomachenko starts the fight early,

does not wait, does not play it safe. I want to see him go for it. You know, we talk about daring to be great and Lomachenko has done that over the course of his career in a lot of ways. But in this situation, it seemed like he saw something he didn't like and he shied away. And I don't know if that's, I don't, it's, I was disappointed. I wanted the same way I was disappointed when Triple G really didn't use much more than his jab. Couldn't pull the trigger on the right against Canelo in the first fight,

even though I scored it for triple G, I was disappointed. He didn't take more chances. And that's easy to say. I'm not in there taking fire back from Lopez and Canelo, but. And you ain't trying. I'm going to be honest here. I say, if you ain't, if you ain't willing to risk being knocked out to try to win and you ain't cheating. You ain't trying. I'm going to be honest here. I say, if you ain't willing to risk being knocked out to try to win, then you ain't trying. Now, Loma did do that in the second half. You got to do it earlier. Do I believe that in my heart? Yes, I do.

All right. Thank you very much. Please continue to contribute. I mean, sorry, patronize and follow the Morning Combat crew and all we do on the skinhead side, on the box side. This guy, Rafe and I, we're going to keep doing this, all right? The boxing hardcore. We're not regular fans, okay? We are two are two hard men we're gonna keep giving it to you tackling the big topics coming in in and out just like college right I ain't pulling out for nothing Rafe um

Rafe Boogs where can we follow you at Rafe Boogs on Twitter uh you know you you formally we saw your boxing writing great work in Grantland on theathletic.com. Where can we see you today? Still writing the Ring City USA newsletter for our friends about to start their series up next month on NBC Sportsnet. It's been fun. I'm doing that sort of every other week slash week. It changes. I'll have one out next week if people want to check for that.

That's the best work in the game right there. Patronize his books. He is a great author. McSorley's My Father and Me game right there. Patronize his books. He is a great author. McStore leads my father and me, right? Shouts to Kriegel. Fantastic book right there. All right, for Rafe Boogs, it is your boy BC. Lopez, he's pound for pound worthy.

Let's see what the future brings. I know I'm out of here. Rafe, you got any words for the people? We out.