LOS ANGELES _ With several unification bouts in discussion and looming battles pitting champions moving up in weight to test other belt-holders, there's a push in boxing to settle many of the debates that linger in the pound-for-pound rankings.
It starts with Saturday's lightweight title defense by longtime champion Jorge Linares against two-division champion Vasyl Lomachenko at New York's Madison Square Garden.
Then, there are two more on the same day, June 9, when former unified 140-pound champion Terence Crawford moves up a division to meet World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Jeffrey Horn of Australia in Las Vegas.
At Staples Center that night, World Boxing Association featherweight super champion Leo Santa Cruz and world champion Abner Mares square off in a rematch of the 2015 "Battle for Los Angeles" that Santa Cruz won by majority decision.
The haggling is expected to reach a fevered pitch over the pursuit of a unified heavyweight championship bout between Anthony Joshua of England and Alabama's Deontay Wilder.
And the strained feelings between middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and former two-division champion Canelo Alvarez of Mexico will color those talks, especially at the start, as they eye a Sept. 15 rematch in Las Vegas.
The reward for such painstaking negotiation will be massive purse money and some greater clarity over who definitely should reign as boxing's best.
Until that's settled, however, Times boxing writer Lance Pugmire provides his thoughts on who stands where now:
