Lol yo I had to stop reading when you said world title challenger…. Uysk is a good fighter and a top 4 P4Per but we giving credit for losing world title fights that’s not a positive distinction
Whyte is currently ranked as the 5th best heavyweight so Wallin will take his place if he beats him, just as Usyk took AJ's place as the 2nd highest ranked. Usyk was ranked 10th before he beat AJ.
.....and if you fail to acknowledge that one of the impediments to Usyk not having a better hw record being b/c he hasn't been a hw until 3-4 fights ago then.......?
Uysk has 19 fights mostly filled with quality. Wilder didn't fight anyone of any real quality until about 36 fights in, and how good Ortiz is is debatable. Looking at Usyk's best opposition, Fury is the only one who compares to that, and he's fought him 3 times. I don't agree with counting the same fighter as separate fighters coz you fought them more than once. 10x fighting the same guy is not the equivalent of fighting 10 separate fighters, each providing their own separate threat. Also Usyk has remained undefeated, Wilder has lost twice now and he almost lost vs Ortiz. Not only has Ortiz not beaten anyone of worth, but he was also old and past his own prime. At 39 years old Ortiz almost beat Wilder, Wilder had to wait until Ortiz was 40 and Ortiz was still winning every single round until Wilder KO'd him. Ortiz was standing right in Wilder's firing line the entire fight. How much of a chance would Ortiz have against Usyk? He'd get absolutely smoked.
Whose fault is that? Wilder and Usyk both fought in the same division as amateurs. Usyk fought big heavyweights in the World Series of Boxing. Usyk turned pro at heavyweight. Then Usyk moved down to cruiserweight. If one of Usyk's "impediments" is that he fought at cruiserweight for so long, take it up with Usyk. Wilder could've fought at cruiserweight, too. But he chose to fight bigger guys for bigger money. Those are the questions no one asked Usyk in all the lead up and postfight for the Joshua bout that were screaming to be asked. Why did you move down to cruiserweight? Why didn't you stay at heavyweight when you turned pro? Why did you waste the vast majority of your pro career fighting at cruiserweight when you could've been fighting Wlad, Fury, Wilder and Joshua the last four years? Who thought it was a better idea to fight guys like Marco Huck? It's never made sense. Unless he just thought it would be easier at cruiserweight. Unless the thought of giving up 20, 40, 60 pounds to opponents every time out was too big of a hurdle. But those questions still need to be asked, especially after he won. What took you so long to get here?
Well, we would know how Usyk and Ortiz would've panned out of if Usyk didn't run down to cruiserweight. If Usyk wanted to fight Luis Oritz, or Deontay Wilder, or Tyson Fury and all the rest ... he has known where they were the last eight years. And they weren't at cruiserweight. Luis Ortiz didn't avoid Usyk. Ortiz didn't leave the division. Usyk did. The question isn't how do you think Ortiz would've done against Usyk? It's why the hell wasn't Usyk fighting at heavyweight so we could find out? If Ortiz fought Mchunu, outweighed him by 40 pounds and stopped him, how much credit would Ortiz have gotten by you guys? When you look at it like that, most of Usyk's fights have been "filler" fights ... because they were "filling" the time until he decided to fight heavyweights ... where he should've been the whole time. Why wasn't Usyk a heavyweight? Why did he dry out for weigh ins and then go after cruiserweight belts? It's the same question I have for guys like Lawrence Okolie. That guy looks bigger than Usyk and Wilder. Why is he drying out and fighting cruisers? Because it's easier? Is that the reason? It appears so.
Witherspoon was a replacement for a fight that I definitely wouldn't have considered as a filler opponent, so he deserves grace for that as well.
Why be a heavyweight when you can fight at your natural weight class (CW) against a challenging, stacked division, achieve glory (and set him up as a two-division, and rare Cruiserweight-Heavyweight, champion), and get the mandatory to almost immediately challenge the belts at HW without taking unnecessary lifelong damage against larger opponents? It's blatantly the smarter choice, and it's not like it was an easy Cruiserweight division ... a third of the guys he fought at CW have made or are expected to make a big splash at HW. The Cruisers he faced were blatantly better boxers than the top Heavies, only he wasn't going into every fight with a big height/reach/weight disadvantage and taking more damage per punch.
yea, he got popped for steroids. I'm not saying he was ever gonna be a world beater but he was "up and coming", so I don't consider him "filler" per se.
His natural weight class? Do you honestly believe he weighed under 200 pounds when he stepped in the ring ANY time he fought as a pro? He never weighed in under 198 - 30 hours before a fight. And most of the time, he couldn't get down that low. It's not like he's a 180-pounder who can't make 175. Every time Usyk fought as a cruiserweight, he entered the ring weighing more than 200 pounds. Just like Wilder. Usyk's natural weight class is heavyweight. Usyk weighed more against Chisora and Joshua than Wilder did in 2018 when he fought Ortiz and Fury for the first times. Last time out, Usyk weighed NINE pounds more than Wilder did in the first Fury fight. Wilder has just fought as a heavyweight his whole career. Because he is a heavyweight. Usyk is a heavyweight, too. Okolie is a heavyweight, too. They should move the cruiserweight limit back to 190 and move weigh-ins back to the day of the fight, like it was when Holyfield was champion. Holyfield fought Qawi weighing 186 and 187 ... THE DAY of the fight. Usyk's never been able to dry out lower than 198 his whole pro career. Then all those 220 pounders who are drying out for cruiserweight belts will fight where they are supposed to ... LIKE WILDER DID.