Roy Jones Jr believes Terence Crawford is the pound-for-pound king of boxing.
However, ‘RJ’ insists fellow two-weight undisputed champion Naoya Inoue is ‘fast on his heels’.
“Right now the pound-for-pound king with the Kid [Naoya] Inoue right on his back,” Jones Jr told talkSPORT Drive.
“I’ll tell you why, Terence Crawford has been dominating for the last ten years, ain’t nobody come close.
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“The only reason he didn’t get the pound-for-pound title earlier is because no one higher up the ladder would give him the opportunity, but he is definitely now pound-for-pound the king.
“Inoue is fast on his heels because anyone you give Inoue, he destroys.”
Jones Jr’s assessment lines up with the Ring Magazine’s pound-for-pound ratings which have Crawford at No.1 and Inoue at No.2.
Just below them on the boxing icon’s list is Dmitry Bivol who faces Artur Beterbiev on June 1 in Saudi Arabia for all four major sanctioning body belts at light-heavyweight.
Providing Bivol wins that fight, Jones Jr believes he can leapfrog both boxers into pole position.
“After that, you’ve probably got to go with [Dmitry] Bivol, he’s been doing his thing for a while,” he added.
“Bivol has shown that he can beat whoever he wants to beat, now if he beats [Artur] Beterbiev he’s going to get the new crown of pound-for-pound king.”
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Crawford became the consensus pound-for-pound king after beating Errol Spence Jr last July to become undisputed champion at welterweight.
In doing so, he became the first two-weight undisputed champion in the four-belt era having already claimed all of the titles at super-lightweight six years prior.
Inoue was the second man to achieve this distinction when he followed up his reign of dominance at bantamweight with another four-belt unification at super-bantamweight at the back end of 2023.
