How is Usyk better than Canelo P4P?

Not just Boxrec's. ESPN's P4P, Ring's P4P. Lets go through all the P4P rankings out there. How many of them have Usyk higher than Canelo in terms of P4P?

 

Yeah all I'm saying is that Canelo is on average much higher P4P when it comes to the so-called official P4P lists out there. Now personally I don't put too much stock into any of these lists wehther it's ESPN or whoever but the general consensus is that Canelo is better P4P than Usyk. All I'm doing is trying to understand why you or other posters think Usyk deserves to be higher than Canelo, and to your credit you've stepped up and provided some reasoning which I'm still sorting through lol.

 

His footwork is solid, I don't know if it's on another level or outstanding.

After Bellew started gassing out and started basically just standing there lying on the ropes. He was a sitting duck by the time that straight finished him.

Nothing I've seen from Usyk's footwork has blown me away. I'm not saying he has bad footwork but he hasn't shown the sort of footwork Canelo showed vs GGG in their first fight.

 

I'm not denying that Usyk has good footwork. I think we can agree that both Usyk and Canelo have good footwork. The question is who has better footwork and why.

 

OK fair enough. With P4P being primarily who you are as a fighter right now I think you can understand why I came away not impressed by his footwork vs Bellew. And I think you can also understand why I wasn't impressed with how he fought for much of those first 6 rounds getting pretty well outboxed by Tony Bellew. That said, I'm not at all hating on Usyk. He definitely deserves to be in this conversation it's just fair play to point out the holes in his game.

 

He didn't fight the kind of high level opposition Canelo fought either. The more you dare to be great, the better your opposition the more yeah-but decisions you are destined to have. And by the way you could call Usyk vs Briedis a yeah-but decision too. He won that fight by the exact same score as Canelo beat GGG.

(and I think you would agree that Briedis is not better than GGG)

 

Records aside, which divisions would you say has more talent in them right now : Middleweight or Cruiserweight?

It's easier to be undefeated when you are fighting in a less talented and less challenging division. You complain all the time about how you don't think Canelo deserved some of his victories. So what does being undefeated even mean if you have several close disputed wins on there that could have been losses? And by the way, Canelo just beat GGG who was undefeated. So there. Oh and don't forget Liam Smith was undefeated when Canelo beat him since beating undefeated people is so important.

I'm not taking anything away from Usyk by the way. He has beaten undefeated fighters which is impressive. So has Canelo, and the undefeated fighter he beat just so happened to be the MW King.

LOL if it was so one-sided then how do you explain this comment after the fight from Usyk :

"Those are the most difficult rounds I've had in my career, and we will work on the improvement of my style,"

It was so one-sided that after the fight Usyk said it was the most difficult rounds of his career and he needed to work on improving his style ? !

In your dreams he did.

 

Yup a lot of people sure do go for resume which is annoying since that's not supposed to be what P4P is about at all.

Lets look at their last 3 fights then. Canelo's near flawless performance vs Chavez Jr where he won every round and stood between rounds for the entire fight. Then the two fights with GGG, both of which however you scored them, I don't see how you could come away from both of those fights and not be impressed with Canelo's performances. There's a tendency to scoff at Canelo's performance vs Jr because he was fighting Jr, but you won't find a better performance. Canelo put on an absolute clinic vs Jr and that can't be ignored.

We can certainly revisit this after the Fielding fight but as of now based on each fighter's last few performances Canelo just seems to be a more polished more versatile more well rounded higher level fighter than Usyk. Canelo also is much more experienced as a pro with over 3 times as many wins / bouts as Usyk and over 3 times as many rounds fought despite being 3 years younger than Usyk which speaks volumes.

I thought Bellew won the first 4 rounds though I agree 4 was close. In each of those rounds Bellew landed the more eye catching punches and seemed to be the ring general. Round 1 Usyk just didn't throw enough, it was a definite feel out round but hard to give that to Usyk due to his inactivity. Round 5 was close could have gone either way. Usyk won rounds 6 and 7 mainly because Bellew started to gas. One of those rounds I think it was the 6th Usyk was clearly winning the round in the first half but Bellew got in some nice shots towards the end.

He said it was subjective, he was trying to be understanding to Skip Bayless who said GGG won. It's hard to say that Usyk Bellew would have been a clear decision if he didn't gas. We don't really know that especially when you consider how close the Briedis fight was. What can't be denied is that Bellew was winning before he started to gas. I'm not taking anything away from Usyk though and I respect what you're saying, but when you compare how Usyk fought against Bellew to what Canelo did to GGG it's really no comparison. Canelo had a much more seasoned fighter in front of him and he performed at a much higher level. Bellew's back was on the ropes for a good amount of that fight and he looked exhausted by the time that KO came.

I'll have to revisit it especially in light of this conversation. Just to be clear, Canelo hasn't had any recent poor performances.

How much of it was adapting and how much of it was Bellew gassing?

Usyk is definitely a beast I agree with you there. The guy is no joke, he's also got a really scary demeanor about him and a cold stare. I'm not doubting the guy's effectiveness one bit I'm just questioning how anyone can put him ahead of Canelo in terms of P4P.

Fair enough, and you've made some great points and I will definitely check out more Usyk footage. I appreciate this spirited discussion and it's great to actually have a substantive point by point debate about who is better and why. This is exactly why I created this topic and you've rose to the occassion KiwiMan and for that I salute you.

I still have yet to respond to the 2nd part of your first response which I'll get started on now I know you talked about Usyk's stamina and some other aspects of his game that still need to be addressed.