TBRB Rankings Update: Cotto is King, Top Dawg Williams Debuts at 175
Miguel Cotto photo by Chris Farina for Top Rank
by Gautham Nagesh
As I’ve mentioned here before, Stiff Jab is a member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board. That means every week I participate in an online forum where a number of impartial boxing writers from around the globe debate on the ranking of the top ten fighters in every weight division.
The ranking proposals, rules, and changes are all transparent and concrete. Our champions are real champions, earned in the ring, not paper champions, produced via favors from sanctioning bodies. We don’t strip titles and we don’t charge sanctioning fees. We simply recognize the best. The boxing world is slowly waking up to this fact, but to help accelerate that process, I’m going to periodically post updates here on changes in our rankings.
The big mover this week is the man you see above, Miguel Cotto aka the new middleweight champion of the world. In just his first fight as a middleweight, Cotto dethroned the hobbled champion Sergio Martinez and forced the Argentine’s corner to stop the fight before the 10th round. As a result, Cotto is now the money man in yet another division, and the prime target for Gennady Golovkin, Peter Quillin, and anyone else at 160 lbs.[[MORE]]
Martinez drops down to #3 behind those two, and looks primed to ride off into the sunset as one of the sport’s better rags-to-riches stories in recent years. The inaugural winner of Stiff Jab’s fighter of the year honor in 2010, he will always hold a special place in my heart, since his upset of Kelly Pavlik to win the unified middleweight crown is the first fight I ever wrote about.Martinez cemented that title a few months later by blasting Paul Williams with a dynamite overhand left, and he never looked back. Thanks for the memories Maravilla, please don’t let the ring pull you back in.
With Martinez exiting TBRB’s pound-for-pound list, flyweight Roman Gonzalez deservedly makes his debut. Also leaving the middleweight rankings is Irishman Andy Lee, who made a smashing debut at 154 lbs. by stopping John Jackson with a dramatic right hook on the Cotto-Martinez undercard. Junior middleweight is a deep division, but Lee could hold his own against most fighters at the weight.
Al Haymon-signed local light heavyweight Thomas “Top Dawg” Williams Jr. also made his debut in the rankings, after former champ Chad Dawson exited due to a year of inactivity. Williams is now the most mature of the latest crop of DMV prospects, and appears poised to join Gary Russell Jr., Lamont Peterson and Thompson as a legitimate contender.
In another shift of local interest, heavyweight Carlos Takam of Cameroon moves up to #5 after beating D.C.’s Tony Thompson, who slides to #10. That bumped Philly’s Steve “USS” Cunningham off the list, another tough break in a career full of them. Junior lightweight Javier Fortuna of the Dominican Republic re-enters at #10 after Yuriorkis Gamboa exits due to inactivity. Finally, Paul Butler of England debuts at bantamweight after edging countryman Stuart Hall for the IBF belt.