It wasn’t too long ago that Canelo Alvarez was the pound-for-pound king of boxing.
After beating Gennadiy Golovkin in their second fight back in 2018, Canelo became a fixture in the top three and locked in the top spot on many lists when he acquired the WBO light heavyweight title when he knocked out Sergey Kovalev. He only tightened his stranglehold on the position when he ran roughshod over the super middleweight division to become the first and only undisputed 168-pound champion on November 6, 2021, when he stopped Caleb Plant to acquire the IBF title and the last infinity stone.
But then his quest for greatness was disrupted by Dmitry Bivol when Canelo began to pursue unifying the light heavyweight titles.
He was soundly beaten by the technically superior Russian and fell out of the running for the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. His follow-up performance — a definitive, yet underwhelming decision victory over a 40-year-old Golovkin — didn’t help matters, either.
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As Canelo steps back into the ring following wrist surgery to face John Ryder in defense of his 168-pound titles on May 6 in a homecoming fight at Akron Stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico, one has to wonder if there is a path for the 32-year-old to find his way back to the top of the pound for pound list.
There’s a chance, but it is improbable.
Canelo's next fight
Obviously, Canelo will have to defeat John Ryder and look good doing it before this conversation can advance any further. And there is extra emphasis on the latter part.
He has to look good dispatching of Ryder, who really has no business in the ring with Canelo. At 31-5 with losses to Billy Joe Saunders, Callum Smith and Rocky Fielding — all former Canelo victims — few expect Ryder to provide much resistance. The expectation is a stoppage and anything short of an absolutely dominant one-sided beating will cost him the opportunity at being atop the pound-for-pound list again.
His next two fights will be significant in staking his claim. He can either welcome the challenge of WBC interim titleholder David Benavidez or move back up to 175 pounds for another crack at Bivol.
Neither win is a given. Benavidez is younger, bigger and perhaps hungrier than Canelo while Bivol is also bigger but has a style that Canelo couldn’t come close to cracking when they met last year. But those two fights are necessary for Canelo to climb back up the fictional rankings.
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Pound-for-pound rankings
Not everything is in Canelo's control, either.
Meanwhile, he has to hope that both unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk and former undisputed bantamweight champion Naoya Inoue lose their next fights. Inoue has a super bantamweight title showdown with WBC and WBO champion Stephen Fulton and Usyk is still standing by for a chance to become the undisputed heavyweight champion against Tyson Fury.
There are a lot of moving parts to get Canelo back into the conversation as the best boxer in the world. However, there’s also one thing of note that is working against Alvarez.
MORE: SN's updated pound-for-pound rankings
According to Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound rankings, only one fighter has regained his status as the pound-for-pound after losing it since 2000:
Floyd Mayweather.
Mayweather was #1 from 2005 to 2009. The only reason he lost his ranking was due to his “retirement” after he defeated Ricky Hatton in 2007. After being removed due to inactivity, Mayweather returned to the ring and defeated Juan Manuel Marquez in September 2009 and appeared at #2 behind Manny Pacquiao. Mayweather regained the top spot in 2012 and held on to it until 2015 when he retired again.
But the difference between Mayweather and Canelo is that Mayweather never lost a fight. Canelo has. And no fighter who has lost has been able to regain the top spot.
What does that tell us? Canelo dares to be great but sometimes there are mountains that are too tall to climb. But you can’t tell Canelo that because he’s going to attempt to climb it anyway.