It is time for our weekly S8C Top 25 Rankings update. This weekend saw two major cards, one featuring cruiserweight unification in the World Boxing Super Series while the other showcased Jorge Linares and Lucas Matthysse on HBO. Plus, like always, less prominent fights also need to be noted.
#1 cruiserweight Oleksandr Usyk narrowly unified two cruiserweight titles and advanced to the World Boxing Super Series cruiserweight finals with a highly entertaining and competitive win over previous number three Mairis Briedis. Of course Usyk keeps his top spot, but I did have to drop Briedis one slot to #4. Fortunately for him, it is likely a short lived fall as next week’s loser between #2 Murat Gassiev and #3 Yunier Dorticos will fall behind him barring something unexpected.
HBO’s card similarly saw Jorge Linares retain his #1 lightweight ranking, though not against nearly the same level of competition. Somewhat counter intuitively, I have actually brought his opponent Mercito Gesta up four spots from twenty first to #17 despite the wide loss. He won a few rounds and looked a little more competent against my top guy in the division than I expected. Even though he was never a threat to win the fight, I felt I could see that I had Gesta underrated a bit. Lucas Matthysse climbed two spots from sixteen to #14 at welterweight following his knockout win as well.
Two other ranked fighters were in action. Rising Belgian cruiserweight prospect Yves Ngabu picked up another win. I moved him from the last man in to #23 as he is more talented then the two men that were ahead of him. Power punching top ten light flyweight Felix Alvarado held strong at #9 in that underrated division following his stay busy win at home in Nicaragua as well.
Finally, previous #7 super bantamweight Jonathan Guzman and #17 junior lightweight Jose Pedraza have both timed out of the rankings due to a year of inactivity without a current fight scheduled. This should have happened a couple weeks ago in the case of Guzman, but I do this by hand and sometimes miss these things.
