I honestly think Oleksandr Usyk would struggle to land many clean shots on Chris Byrd. He was extremely slippery.
This. Byrd figured Vitali out by the mid rounds and had put a lot of work in on Vitali's chest and body, which is also why Vitali wanted out of that fight and didn't want the rematch, since the same thing would've happened. However, even Byrd admitted that the same tactics that were effective against Vitali didn't work with Wlad, since Wlad is a much better boxer than Vitali, is better at making mid-fight adjustments, and his blows were a lot more punishing than Vitali's.
hmmm, it’s hard to say. Byrd only really got bulldozed by wlad and ike, huge punchers, wlad being incredibly accurate and ike throwing like a man possessed. I see a chess match, but we will see how usyk progresses. As mentioned, byrds heavyweight resume speaks for itself
Vitali injured himself, Byrd was lucky this happened. You would have to suffer from some severe form of mental ******ation to assume Vitali would get injured again if they fought 9 more times.
Vitali had every chance to get an immediate rematch with Byrd, who was pretty much begging for Vitali to fight him again, but Vitali's people had no interest in the rematch. Many years back on youtube Byrd went into detail about how whenever he contacted Vitali's people that they told him that if he wanted a Klitschko he'd have to fight Wlad, who was a much harder style matchup for Byrd and twice the boxer Vitali was. Vitali turning down a chance to get his belt back and avenge his loss against Byrd to fight Timo Hoffman also didn't showed that he didn't want to deal with Byrd again.
Byrd was no pushover and very skilled. If you're going by resume at HW, you have to favour Byrd. If you're going by the eye test, then I think Usyk would out-footwork Byrd and win on points. If you're being reasonable, then its too early to make a definitive call on this. Give Usyk time to pass or fail at HW.