Floyd Mayweather still has Terence Crawford as the best pound-for-pound boxer today over Naoya Inoue.
Inoue staked his claim as the pound-for-pound best boxer after becoming a four-division champion following his knockout win over Stephen Fulton in their title fight for the WBC and WBO junior featherweight straps.
Having unified the bantamweight division in December, Inoue is also notably one win over two-belt holder Marlon Tapales away from completely unifying the junior featherweight titles.
However, just a few days later, Crawford would further cement his own claim after a dominant ninth-round TKO victory over Errol Spence Jr. to become the unified welterweight champion.
It was the second division Crawford had unified and given that Spence was also on the pound-for-pound list — unlike Fulton — and was completely dominated and battered, even Inoue's biggest fans would find it hard to deny “Bud” of the top spot.
Mayweather is certainly not denying Crawford the top spot.
In fact, “Money” went one step further and called for Inoue to fight in the United States more so that he could be subject to random blood and urine testing.
“I'm not gonna sit here and say that Inoue deserves to be over Terence Crawford,” Mayweather told Fight Hype (via Boxing Social). “I'm not gonna say that. Absolutely not. I will always, always stand behind my people first.
“You know what the boxing world gonna say? ‘Inoue did this! Inoue did that!' Okay, that's cool. What I need Inoue to do is do like we do over here in the US. I need him to come fight in the US, random blood and urine testing.”
It's a bold claim from Mayweather as he's more or less implying that Inoue could potentially be using performance enhancing drugs with less stringent testing in his home nation.
In Inoue's defense, while 21 of his 25 fights have been in Japan, he's fought three times in the United States. He has also been subject to VADA testing in the past, most notably for his 2022 rematch with Nonito Donaire in Saitama.
That said, the former five-division champion did reserve some praise for the undefeated Japanese superstar. He even wants to see a potential catchweight fight between him and Gervonta “Tank” Davis.
“I think he's a helluva fighter,” Mayweather added. “I don't wanna take nothing away from him. And I like him cause I see he take a lot of my stuff from my playbook. But it's okay cause boxers, you're supposed to. You're supposed to take from the greats.
“What I would like to see is if he could fight Gervonta at a catchweight. That would be a helluva fight.”
For now, Inoue is currently fighting in a weight class 13 pounds lighter than Davis, so while it would be a huge fight that would definitely be of interest, it just doesn't make any sense as things stand.
However, Mayweather is not the first to suggest such a matchup — perhaps with more calls for it and Inoue potentially moving up to 126 in the future, it could end up being a reality.
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