So far, I also going to put Crawford at the top and next is Inoue as he again unifies all the belts from his current division.
If Inoue goes up in weight and will become an undisputed champion again, then we can expect that he'll replace Crawford in the ranking. Inoue probably has more achievements as a champion but maybe Crawford is more deserving since he has fought more dangerous fighter than Inoue.
it's hard to make a debate on who is the number 1 or not because as a fan we are too bias, so let's just based the ranking on the publishers report and we can all agree with it. After this fight with Nery which I'm sure Inoue will be victorious, maybe moving up should be next, forget about other challengers lining up, Inoue has to chase making a history again.
It's really up to the fans to decide, we all have our own boxers who we wants to be the Boxer of the Year, so it's hard to go against the decision of the Ring magazine. Although I think this is not the first time that they made controversial fighters becoming their BOTY, or fighters not deserving.
But in this case, it depends on how they look, but according to them, Inoue beating the best super bantamweight and Inoue becoming the second boxer to become unified champion in two weight decision is good enough for them to declare him as their BOTY.
I don't think it was a very bad decision, to be honest. A controversial one for sure but not a bad one. He has been very dominating and maybe if we say that it is the boxer of the year and this year other fighters had better performances, that can definitely be argued. But to be honest I think the decision is probably not the best, but not bad at all.
I also agree that we all want to see our favourite fighter be the BOTY. but it is also true that most of the time our favourite fighters actually don't deserve that. That is the hard truth.