The first half of 2026 just ended, and boxing’s pound-for-pound landscape looks nothing like it did in January. Terence Crawford retired. Oleksandr Usyk vacated three heavyweight belts. Naoya Inoue conquered a fourth weight class. And a 27-year-old from Philadelphia named Jaron “Boots” Ennis stopped Xander Zayas in seven rounds to seize two junior middleweight titles and declare himself the sport’s next gravitational center.
ESPN’s midyear awards dropped Monday, and the choices tell you exactly where boxing stands at the halfway mark. The best fight? Daniel Dubois TKO11 over Fabio Wardley — a heavyweight war where Wardley was losing on all three scorecards before Dubois rose from the canvas twice to close the show — a fight worthy of the midyear awards shortlist, much like Abdullah Mason’s dramatic 12th-round rescue this past weekend. Best prospect? Ben Whittaker, the flashy British light heavyweight who’s gone from Olympic silver medalist to legitimate title contender faster than anyone predicted.
But the real story isn’t in the awards. It’s in the rankings — and the fault lines running through them.
Pound-for-Pound: Inoue’s Throne, Ennis’s Claim
Naoya Inoue sits at number one on virtually every major P4P list after his dominant victory over Junto Nakatani earlier this year. The Japanese “Monster” has now won titles in four weight classes, and with Crawford gone and Usyk aging out of relevance, there’s no serious challenger to his throne. Bleacher Report, ESPN, and The Ring all agree: Inoue is the consensus king.
The more interesting question is who sits below him. ESPN’s Andreas Hale has Jesse Rodriguez at number two — the “Bam” Rodriguez who’s been quietly building an argument at flyweight that might be the most compelling in any division. David Benavidez, fresh off his cruiserweight coronation, sits at four. Shakur Stevenson holds five. Dmitry Bivol, the man who beat Canelo and Beterbiev, occupies six.
Then there’s Ennis. He jumped to eight on Hale’s ballot after the Zayas demolition, and the trajectory matters more than the number. a trajectory I flagged in my Friday preview. The WBA and WBO titles are his. Vergil Ortiz holds the WBC. The remaining question is whether Ennis can chase undisputed — and whether the politics of boxing promotion will let that fight happen before the window closes.
Heavyweight: Usyk’s Exit and the Four-Belt Scramble
Here’s where things get genuinely chaotic. as I covered when Usyk vacated. Only the WBO belt (held by Daniel Dubois) remains intact. Agit Kabayel has been elevated to WBC champion. Murat Gassiev, who was supposed to fight Tony Yoka this Friday for the WBA title, is now the standing WBA champion after Yoka withdrew with a back injury — and Gassiev will face Peter Kadiru instead.
The IBF title? Completely vacant. No mandatory in sight.
Bad Left Hook’s July rankings reflect the instability: Usyk still sits at number one on reputation and record, but his next fight is unknown. Kabayel at two, Fury at three, Dubois at four. The real excitement lives further down — Moses Itauma, the 20-year-old British phenom, is ranked fifth and faces Filip Hrgovic on August 29 in a fight that could define the division’s future. Anthony Joshua returns July 25 against Kristian Prenga in Jeddah, but nobody’s pretending AJ is anything more than a gatekeeper at this point.
The heavyweight division hasn’t been this wide open since Lennox Lewis retired in 2003. For better or worse, the belts are scattered, and the best fights aren’t being made. Sound familiar?
Summer Card Highlights: What’s Coming Next
The back half of 2026 is stacked. Errol Spence Jr. makes his return against Tim Tszyu on July 25 in Sydney — a cross-promotional PBC-DAZN clash that tests whether Spence can still compete at elite level after his devastating loss to Crawford. Canelo Alvarez’s WBC super middleweight defense against Christian Mbilli has been pushed to late October in Riyadh, which gives Canelo extra recovery time from elbow surgery and gives Mbilli more time to prepare for the biggest fight of his career. Bob Arum has already picked Mbilli to win. That’s either a promoter’s hustle or a genuinely held belief — and I’m not sure which is more interesting.
Rolly Romero will defend his WBA welterweight title against Teofimo Lopez on August 22. Romero’s first title defense against a fighter with Lopez’s resume is the kind of mismatch that occasionally produces magic. And on the undercard of Canelo-Mbilli, Diego Pacheco faces Immanuwel Aleem in a fight that could position Pacheco as the next challenger at 168.
De Los Santos is appealing his second-round KO loss to Jose Valenzuela. I don’t have strong feelings about the appeal itself, but the fact that a fighter can lose by knockout and still pursue legal remedies tells you everything about the state of boxing’s regulatory framework.
Filipino Corner: Martin Calls the Shots
If you’re Filipino like me, the midyear boxing news hits different when you look at the Pinoy pipeline. Carl Jammes Martin — the WBO No. 1 superbantamweight contender — is calling out both Naoya Inoue and JohnRiel Casimero. “Kaya ko suntok nila at kaya ko silang talunin,” Martin told reporters. I can handle their punches and I can beat them.
Martin, 27, with an unbeaten 28-0 record and 21 knockouts, is set to face David Picasso on October 23 in Riyadh on the Canelo-Mbilli undercard. Picasso lost to Inoue on points last December, so this fight is essentially a measuring stick — if Martin beats the guy who went the distance with the P4P king, the Inoue conversation gets very real.
Martin isn’t the only Filipino No. 1 contender in the current rankings. Charly Suarez holds the WBO superfeatherweight mandatory position. Miel Fajardo is the IBF flyweight mandatory. Melvin Jerusalem holds the WBC minimumweight spot. Vic Saludar is the WBO minimumweight mandatory. Four Filipinos holding mandatory challenger positions across four different weight classes — that’s not a fluke, that’s a pipeline.
On the domestic front, Enano faces Tyler Blizzard on July 10 in Brisbane for the IBF Pan Pacific featherweight title. Paradero fights Cuarto for the PBF Silver flyweight title on July 25. The local scene keeps grinding, even when the headlines focus elsewhere.
Here’s what the midyear tells me: boxing is healthier than it’s been in years, but the best fights are still being held hostage by promotional politics and sanctioning body bureaucracy. Ennis vs. Ortiz is the fight everyone wants. Inoue moving up again is the fight the purists crave. And somewhere in the Philippines, Carl Jammes Martin is training in Los Angeles, preparing to prove that the next great Filipino fighter isn’t a memory of Pacquiao — it’s a present-tense reality.