The 2025 spit-or-get-off-the-pot rankings

In the year-end awards issues of The Ring magazine when I was an editor, there was always a two-page spread called the “Highly Unofficial Official Awards,” a compendium of assorted bests and worsts and oddities from the year that was (and to some extent a precursor to The Raskies). One of those annual “honors” was titled the “Spit-Or-Get-Off-The-Pot Award.”

We weren’t allowed to use curse words on the pages of the magazine at the time. But everyone gets the meaning. Someone else may need the commode, so if you’re just passing time, sitting there, reading or smartphone surfing or whatever, but not getting any business done — well, get up and go do nothing someplace else.

It’s a phrase that applies in boxing more than in most other sports because boxers (along with their managers and promoters) make their own schedules. If some NBA superstar is going unchallenged playing against teams that can’t guard him, well, that’s not his fault; he’s just playing the opponents the league is telling him to play. But boxers have more competitive free will. If their limited time in this sport is being wasted, that is, to some extent, their own fault.

Here, then, are my rankings at the dawn of a new year of the 10 fighters who most need to either spit or get off the pot in 2025:

The situation for “MJ” is different from the others coming up on this list, as he’s stalling because he’s an alphabet mandatory to junior featherweight champ Naoya Inoue and is trying to force that title shot — and clearly doesn’t want to take a risky fight in the meantime.

After an upset split decision defeat to Marlen Tapales in April 2023, Akhmadaliev was offered a “title eliminator” against unproven Kevin Gonzalez because, well, this is how it goes with alphabet rankings and rules. One guy is coming off a loss, the other has never fought anyone — let ‘em fight each other and the winner gets a mandate to challenge the beltholder! Akhmadaliev defeated Gonzalez by stoppage and became the mandatory. But Inoue has multiple belts and can’t satisfy all his mandatories at once, so Akhmadaliev and his team are (not terribly patiently) waiting their turn.

Akhmadaliev spent a whole year inactive after beating Gonzalez before scoring an easy KO 3 over journeyman Ricardo Espinoza Franco last month. There are a lot of quality contenders at 122 pounds he could be fighting — Tapales-Akhmadaliev 2 and Akhmadaliev-Luis Nery are certainly appealing bouts. But instead, he’s watching the clock (which wound past his 30th birthday in November).

It’s not the most egregious waste of his and our time imaginable — hence his placement at the bottom of this list — but it’s a noteworthy case of alphabet politics gumming up the works while a quality fighter is in his physical prime.

Cleveland-based junior middleweight Conwell is the only true prospect in these rankings. And his name appears here because it’s been on the hot-prospect radar for at least five years, and he’s still a prospect who hasn’t faced any contenders.

Conwell is 27 years old, and has barely stepped up from where he was at 22. He’s beaten a few modestly regarded fellow prospects (Wendy Toussaint, Juan Carlos Rubio, Gerardo Luis Vergara) and a couple of faded gatekeepers (Juan Carlos Abregu, Nathaniel Gallimore). That’s it. It’s high time for his handlers to find out what they have in the 2016 U.S. Olympian.

I’ll say this for Conwell: At least he’s been active (especially compared to some other boxers in these rankings). He fought three times in 2024. In 2025, he needs the quality to match the quantity.

Loma has the ultimate existential spit-or-get-off-the-pot question to answer: Does he still want to be a boxer?

At 36, with a history of assorted injuries, with an eventual plaque at the International Boxing Hall of Fame assured, Lomachenko has made no secret of the fact that he’s considering retiring.

Unfortunately, he wasted Gervonta “Tank” Davis’ time last year negotiating for a major fight before deciding his heart wasn’t in it. Loma fought once in 2022, once in ’23, and once in ’24. He’s still a pound-for-pound-level boxer when he wants to be. If he wants to be.

There’s a little bit of everything at play with lightweight titlist and borderline pound-for-pounder Stevenson. He hasn’t quite been as active as we’d like (one fight in 2024, two in each of the previous four years), hasn’t landed another step-up opponent since beating Oscar Valdez in April ’22, and gave decidedly lackluster performances atop high-profile ESPN cards each of his last two times out.

He’s 27, and he was supposed to spend the last couple of years shifting into superstar mode, but instead he’s gone flat — and based on a threat to retire earlier this year, he’s as frustrated by it as the fans are.

Shakur is scheduled to face Floyd Schofield on the Saudi supercard on Feb. 22 — a fight most observers feel is coming way too early for the 22-year-old Schofield. But you have to give Schofield credit for daring to be great. Stevenson, meanwhile, is daring to mark time. That had better change after this fight, or else fans may dare to lose interest.
6. Janibek Alimkhanuly

Undefeated southpaw Alimkhanuly is arguably the top dog in the middleweight division — which says a hell of a lot about the state of the middleweight division, because Alimkhanuly has yet to fight a single compelling opponent.

His best opponent, after more than eight years as a pro, is either British fringe contender Denzel Bentley, aging Rob Brant, or fairly washed Hassan N’dam. Alimkhanuly is now 31 years old. I realize the 160-pound division is not overflowing with appetizing options, but still, at a certain point, you accept that your only dessert options are day-old doughnuts and you pick the one that seems the least stale and you take a bite.

It’s been a rough last year-and-a-half for Spence. He got obliterated by Terence Crawford on July 29, 2023, and hasn’t fought since — unless you count a legal skirmish with his former trainer Derrick James.

Spence has actually fought only twice, total, in the last four calendar years. He has nothing scheduled right now, and will turn 35 on March 3. Very little explanation is needed for why he’s on this list.

Spence’s quality of opposition throughout his career has been admirable — Kell Brook, Mikey Garcia, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Yordenis Ugas. So there isn’t a “get off the pot because you’re wasting time in meaningless fights” element to this. When Spence fights, he challenges himself. But at the moment, he simply isn’t fighting.

Neither winner nor loser in that July 2023 welterweight championship showdown in Vegas has been productive since. And with “Bud” Crawford, insufficient production is something of an ongoing trend.

2024 was his fifth consecutive calendar year in which he fought exactly one time. You can’t really knock his quality of opposition — Israil Madrimov proved to be legit, and two fights before Spence was Porter — but the inactivity is brutal for a guy who, when active, is arguably the pound-for-pound king.

Oh, and Bud is 37 years old all of a sudden. One of these days, he’s going to wake up and not have it anymore. Here’s hoping he gets his momentum started up again in 2025, because since his career-defining win over Spence, it has almost completely stalled out.

3. Gervonta “Tank” Davis

The Lomachenko fight falling apart was not Davis’ fault. But however much he may have been a victim of circumstance in that instance, his water-treading goes well beyond just a disappointing second half of 2024.

Tank, who ohbytheway is now in his 30s, was enjoying a steady progression up through the Ryan Garcia mega-fight in April ’23, but he has fought exactly once since. And while Frank Martin was a solid opponent, and the same can be said for upcoming foe Lamont Roach, neither sets the pulse pounding. They’re fine fights. But you can’t help but feel Davis is inching slowly in the wrong direction.

And of course, nobody but Tank can be blamed for his jail stint that followed the body shot knockout of Garcia.

Davis enters 2025 a free man, and one who has an endless supply of marketable opponents to choose from between 130-140 pounds, almost all of whom would love to make the paycheck that comes with fighting Tank. There’s no excuse for a fighter with his selling power and his punching power to have either of those power sources in standby mode at this stage in his career.

2. Jaron “Boots” Ennis

Now we’re reaching the point in the countdown where you can find a lot of fan frustration boiling over.

Ennis, though moving slowly and struggling to land a major fight, was on a positive trajectory up through his exciting bout in Atlantic City against Roiman Villa in July ’23. But the needle stopped pointing up in ’24, with two fights nobody asked for against David Avanesyan and Karen Chukhadzhian. At times in both of those contests, Ennis fought as if he was as disinterested as the fans.

He could rightly point out that Avanesyan was a late replacement and Chukhadzhian was a mandatory that an alphabet group unjustifiably shoved down his throat. But whoever gets the blame, we blinked and Boots is suddenly 27 years old. And he hasn’t fought more than twice in any year since 2018.

For a while, he could say others were ducking him. But he lost the high ground with the way the mooted Vergil Ortiz Jr. failed to materialize. The public reveal of the Ennis side’s negotiations for that fight sure made it look like Boots didn’t want it.

If he’s going to be the next big thing in American boxing — as almost everyone believed a few years ago he would be — it’s statement time in 2025.

1. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez

What a shame that the biggest star in the sport attracted more attention last year for whom he didn’t fight than for whom he did.

Since losing to Dmitry Bivol in 2022, Alvarez has taken five straight fights he had no chance of losing (even if some of us talked ourselves into Jermell Charlo being a live ‘dog): 40-year-old Gennady Golovkin, John Ryder, undersized Charlo, Jaime Munguia, and Edgar Berlanga. And along the way, he’s made suboptimal use of the last five coveted Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day weekends.

And he did all this with one particularly obvious, deserving challenger available. Canelo has earned the right, after a largely glorious 19-year pro career, to do what he wants. And fight fans, in turn, have earned the right to give him endless crap for blatantly avoiding David Benavidez.

Canelo is still only 34 years old — younger than three of the other names in these rankings. And that makes his playing it safe extra frustrating. He still has enough in the tank to be engaging in meaningful fights and to have a fine shot at winning them. He has instead chosen to take an extended victory lap.

Come on, man. There’s a line of people waiting to sit on that throne. If you aren’t going to do anything with it, let someone else have a seat.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].