Was Usyk Unbeatable At Cruiserweight ?

All good mate you are certainly entitled to your opinion. I'm agreeable to a decent extent but still fall a fair way short on some of your views per the moderns. That Usyk is good enough to pop up to Heavyweight and comfortably defeat a huge guy with a big punch in Joshua is extremely impressive even if one wants to take a negative view on him/Joshua.

For mine Usyk would utterly flog guys like Ocasio and Hill.

I'm not sure you've been totally proven right on the likes of Wilder and Loma. He's still only lost to Fury who's at the very least a damn good heavyweight. I'd agree he beat fluff pretty much prior to Fury but he's certainly no Jeff Sims. Lets see what Loma does moving forward.

I also agree fighting so infrequently sure doesn't help them. Covid did have a bit to do with that for some of them. Canelo's been able to stay reasonably busy by modern standards tho. At least he's striving.

 

Briedis came fairly close to doing it, so absolutely not unbeatable, but certainly up there with the absolutely best ever.

 

With today's weight cutting methods and the day before weigh-in just about anyone under 230 lbs could make CW (at 200 lbs) if they wanted to badly enough. In the UFC there are guys the size of prime Ali and Holmes competing at 185 lbs! I don't think that kind of weight cutting is as relatively common in boxing, though, (even if for example Yarde must be cutting crazy amounts), but it can be done.

 

Why would he, when he only needed to make 200 lbs?

 

What?

I thought I was very clear. My point was why are people comparing Usyk with cruiserweights who weighed 189-190 pounds, or middleweights and light heavyweights who moved up to cruiserweight when the limit was 190 pounds ... when Usyk has always fought around 200 pounds.

The limit was 190 pounds for nearly 25 years. The WBC is even considering moving it back to 190 now. No other division has had its weight limit bounced around by 10 pounds or so. There will always be asterisks attached to this division.

Maybe it's because the cruiserweight division has tended to be a wasteland (like it is now) more often than not, so people don't hold it to the same standard as if they'd start screwing around with the weight limits in more established divisions.

But if they bumped up the welterweight division from 147 to 157 pounds, and fans of some champ who had only weighed 157 or MORE as a pro (and could never make 147) insisted he was the greatest welterweight ever ... it would ring a little false to a lot of people.

That's all I meant.

I "get" that it's not his fault the weight limit was moved up and he shouldn't be required to prove he could make 190 because the limit wasn't 190 anymore. But it's difficult to claim someone is the best in a division's history when he wouldn't even be able to make the weight of the division for much of its history.

 

One needs to ensure they don't confuse greatness based on fights that actually happened, with predicted, cross-era, H2H fights that did not.

George Dixon is a consensus top 10 all time FW amongst credible historians, largely based on his 16-2-1 title record at that weight. Not only were those FW title fights not all contested at 126lbs, they were contested at multiple different weights, such was the nature of the era. He unquestionably has one of the greatest records of any fighter ever, in bouts contested at FW.

Usyk has one of the best two records ever in bouts contested at CW. He is therefore, one of the two greatest CWs of all time.

Cross era H2H predictions are completely different and factors such as weight divisions having different limits in different eras and day before vs same day weigh ins, should be factored in.

In this instance, the OP has asked if Usyk is unbeatable at CW, presumably at 200lbs with day before weigh in, amongst fighters have have competed in the CW division.

 

If we're basing it off records in bouts contested at cruiserweight, Usyk's record at cruiserweight is 11-0.

His record at heavyweight is 9-0. Usyk's first four fights as a pro were at heavyweight. His ninth pro fight, against Pedro Rodriguez, was at heavyweight. And his last four fights were at heavyweight.

No offense, but Jai Opetaia is undefeated and has more wins at cruiserweight than Usyk and he's the lineal cruiserweight champ, too.

 

No offence taken.

Most people would consider Usyk as lineal champion from Gassiev at the latest, when he unified all 4 belts, until he moved up.

If you can't see that Usyk's record, based on their respective best wins, is better than Opetai's then I don't know what to say to you.

Bredis
Gassiev
Hunter
Glowacki
Huck
Bellew
Mchunu

Which fighter in history has unified all 4 x CW belts and has 7 wins better than the above, in fights contested at CW?

I'd also argue that non title fights contested at 0.5lbs above a weight, are better thought of as belonging to that weight, so I consider Usyk has having contested more than 11 x CW fights. That's a mute point though, and irrelevant to his ranking at CW. Number of fights/wins are substantially less important factors in how I rank fighters than the quality of their best opposition beaten and the extent to which they proved themselves the best of their era in that division.

 

You mean that he couldn't make it with the same day weigh-in? Because with the day before weigh-in he would, but might not think it would be worth the effort to do it consistently, though.

But, yes, Usyk is certainly bigger than the CWs when the division was 190. My guess is that he was around 210 lbs in the ring as a CW. So yes, it's an uneven comparison between him and CWs in same weigh-in era at 190, since he's a fair bit bigger.

 

So, it's NOT his record at the weight. It's his quality of opposition and accomplishments at the weight. Those are different things.

Okay, if it's quality of opposition and accomplishments, Carlos DeLeon was a four-time cruiserweight champion. Carlos DeLeon beat Leon Spinks when Carlos was 188 and Leon was 194. (No one Usyk beat at cruiserweight ever held the World Heavyweight Title.) Carlos DeLeon moved up from lightweight (not light heavyweight, lightweight) to win four cruiserweight titles.

Is moving up from lightweight to be a four time cruiserweight champ and score a win over a World Heavyweight Champion a BIGGER ACCOMPLISHMENT than moving down to cruiserweight from heavyweight and beating a bunch of guys at cruiserweight who never won anything at heavyweight? How many former lightweights were cruiserweight champions?

Eye of the beholder, I guess.

I don't think Jai Opetaia has beaten better fighters than Usyk overall at cruiserweight ... but Opetaia beat the best fighter Usyk defeated at cruiserweight. And Jai is the lineal champ, regardless of how many belts he has.

I'm just not one who thinks Usyk's era was all that great. How many Hall of Famers will we see come out of Usyk's cruiserweight era (other than Usyk)? Opetaia beat the best guy Usyk beat at cruiserweight, after all.

Hell, Carlos DeLeon isn't even a Hall of Famer. And he's a four-time cruiserweight champ and he beat a former world heavyweight champion.

 

Right. And couldn't have made the weight when it was lower.

If it was always 200, a LOT of guys could've challenged for the cruiserweight title in the first quarter century or so.

Hell, Larry Holmes could've challenged for a cruiserweight title before he was heavyweight champion. He was only 209 when he beat Norton. Mike Weaver could've been a cruiserweight champion first if the limit was 200 pounds. Weaver was only 202 when he challenged Holmes.

Marvis Frazier. Earnie Shavers. Lots of guys who were around 200, but couldn't get down to 190, like Usyk wouldn't have been able to if it had remained there.

If the weight limit was 200, Holyfield may have even stuck around a LOT longer.

Bumping it up to 200 threw everything out of whack.

 

I don't rank fighters purely based on win-loss numbers & neither do most other people. Otherwise Joe Mesi would be ranked above Joe Frazier.

When I & most others rank the greatest fighters in a weight division, they only consider fights contested in & around that weight division and discount size from their considerations. e.g. Sam Langford doesn't appear in most credible historians top 10 all time at HW, but is a consensus top 5 P4P all time based on fights contested at all weights, and factoring in his size to his HW career. Manny Pacquaio is clearly a greater fighter P4P than Jackie Fields, but Fields should rank higher at WW based solely on fights contested in & around that weight division, etc.

It is this logic that sees the vast majority of people rank Usyk as one of the two greatest CWs of all time.

Bredis was 37 when Opetaia beat him & had clearly regressed in the 4.5-years since Usyk beat him. This is an exagerrated example to demonstrate a point - I don't consider Trevor Berbick better than Joe Frazier because he went 1-0 vs Ali, compared to Joe's 1-2, either.

 

It's fair to point out that there's a big difference between a 190 lbs limit with same day weigh ins and a 200 lbs limit with weigh ins the day before. Pre-2004 cruisers were probably at least a stone lighter in the ring than post-2004 cruisers. So you're right that the comparisons are inherently very uneven.

De Leon was 17 when he weighed 135 lbs. When he was 26 (the same age as Usyk when he turned pro) he'd been fighting at 180-196 for 6.5 years. A 19 year old Usyk fought at a similar weight to De Leon at the same age, making 165. I don't consider Usyk to be a MW fighting at HW because of a weight he made at 19, let alone whatever he might have weighed at 17.

De Leon won the WBC 4x and beat 12-3-2 Spinks but he never won any of the other belts (let alone become undisputed) and had 4 losses (17-5 Gordon, 19-2 Ratliff, 17-0 Holyfield, 13-2 Duran) and a draw (15-5 Nelson) in official cruiser bouts.

The HoF is heavily weighted toward Western, in particular American fighters. Americans generally don't care about divisions dominated by a bunch of guys with names like Glowacki and Gassiev. And they've never cared much about cruiser to begin with. So how many of these cruisers get into the HoF isn't a good metric for the division's quality. Cruiserweight in Usyk's era was very much a global division and it had been around for 37 years when Usyk became champion, rather than 1 year as when De Leon became champion, when cruiser was analogous to the bridgerweight division today in terms of money, interest and prestige.

It's also not like some of Usyk's cruiser victims haven't performed well against established heavyweights. Some of the bouts aren't relevant imo (Bellew-Haye x2) but others are (Hunter vs Bakole, Kuzmin and Povetkin, Briedis vs Charr, Huck and Perez). Joshua and Chisora didn't perform as well against Usyk as Briedis did and their performances were only slightly better than Hunter's. Gassiev and Hunter aren't too old and fight at heavyweight, it's entirely conceivable that they could take some more notable scalps.

 

DeLeon was a professional lightweight. Six years later, he was the cruiserweight champion. Don't be dismissive of that. Usyk turned pro at heavyweight and moved down to the cruiserweight division.

A lightweight moving up and winning the cruiserweight title (four times) is more impressive than a heavyweight moving down. By any measure, it is.

DeLeon won the cruiserweight title from the first cruiserweight champion Marvin Camel in 1980 in the Superdome in New Orleans. He last defended the title 10 years later in 1990 in Italy. He was cruiserweight champion for the better part of a decade. He was involved in 16 cruiserweight title fights. He always fought on the road, all over the world. He never engaged in one cruiserweight title fight at home. Not one.

You say he never unified all the belts, but DeLeon was the RING (Lineal) cruiserweight champion before the IBF and WBO even existed.

DeLeon was the RING (Lineal) cruiserweight champion when he faced off against the greatest cruiserweight in history Holyfield in the final unification.

DeLeon fought Holyfield for all the marbles. Usyk didn't. Usyk fought Gassiev for all the marbles. Not quite the same.

Shouldn't be so dismissive of him.

Usyk never beat anyone at cruiserweight who was a former Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion, let alone stop them.

 

I don't consider a non title fight contested between 2 x Cruiserweights where the heavier weighs 200.5 lbs a Heavyweight contest. A young LHW prospect weighing

I doubt I'd rank DeLeon above Usyk P4P based on their entire careers, if I completed a detailed comparative analysis.

However, both are irrelevant to who is the greater Cruiserweight, based on fights contested in that division. Uysk was clearly more dominant, cleaned out the division more comprehensively and beat the better opposition. Which is why in a poll asking who the greatest Cruiserweight of all time is, Uysk would get either the most or the second most votes, and DeLeon would not.