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They’ll move up and down weight classes, searching for the best possible opponent who can give them the most cachet in terms of financial gains, prestige and overall challenge.
Welcome to the world of women’s boxing, where the best fight the best, where title fights are a weekly occurrence and unification bouts are the norm and not the exception.
What follows is not a strict pound-for-pound list. We have our ESPN pound-for-pound rankings for that, although the two lists may look somewhat similar. This takes more into consideration when assessing the best women boxers worldwide.
In addition to their in-ring accomplishments, I considered global reach and the breadth of their careers and where they are now — although the past year-plus of their careers has taken on more weight than, say, accomplishments of a decade ago.
It speaks well of the sport and is indicative of the growth of women’s boxing that it wasn’t an obvious decision how to fill all 30 spots.
The totality of the factors mentioned above gave Katie Taylor the slight edge over Claressa Shields for No. 1. What Taylor has done for the sport in Europe has been extremely impactful, as that’s an area where women’s boxing has become incredibly popular, more so than in the U.S. While it’s not Shields’ fault, because of the divisions she has fought in, the overall quality of opponents Taylor has faced throughout her career has been higher.
It is a toss-up conversation between the two of them, though, and there’s no real wrong answer between Taylor and Shields. They are the two best fighters in the sport and have both had a significant impact on where women’s boxing is today.
And that debate can go throughout the list — even toward the bottom of the top 30, where there are worthy fighters who have been left off. In a sport whose depth has long been an issue in some divisions, that there are continually up-and-coming fighters can only help growth in the future.
But for right now, here’s the list of ESPN’s top…
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