Past Heavyweights Who Beat Usyk

None of these famed old Murican heavyweights I've seen beat Usyk, not a single one. Or any of the 'British' ones.
Upsets could possibly happen always, bombs can land, but in terms of winning a trilogy against him or backing up an upset, no.

I would give Wlad and Povetkin a decent chance, live underdogs. Firstly they're modern HW's not old fighters who people just remember from highlight reels but are much smaller and sloppier than they are thought to be.

Wlad has a chance due to his size, speed and one-punch power, just look how he floored Povetkin with that 'jab hook'. I could see him catching Usyk potentially. If he landed some of the punches Fury did, he could seriously hurt Usyk.

Povetkin is about the same height and slower than Usyk but more powerful. So Usyk probably outboxes him but Povetkin might time him and get him in trouble.

Vitali has zero ways of beating Usyk. Vitali has no defence against non-puddings, no power for a 6'7 fighter, and is completely one dimensional. He throws an arm-punch 1-2 all night then leans back and cocks his eyebrows. Usyk just dances around and boxes his eyes black worse than Kevin Johnson did.

 

Thanks for this polite, reasoned answer

 

I did add the bodyshot caveat. Both AJ and Fury had success walking him down and banging at points, this for me is Foremans only chance. But, I just can't see Usyk being caught for long enough, can't see Foreman 'trapping' him. George hated quick, Fleet footed boxers with good chins and sharp counters. Usyk would be more like prime Ali than Ali was when they fought!! I don't have Usyk in the ATG pantheon at heavyweight but as I've suggested many times, styles make fights and I think he's all wrong for George. But. We'll never know. Interesting chat, thanks.

 

I'll always think Ali beats Usyk and you'll think Usyk beats Ali. Agree to disagree on that, but I just wanna respond to a few things you wrote at the end

Training in boxing hasn’t really changed much over the last 100 years.

1. Jogging
2. Jumping Rope
3. Lifting Weights
4. Bag Work
5. Sparring
6. Rowing Machines and Cycling

That's it. That's the core of every fighter's training.

Those have been around since the late 19th century. There has been barely any advancement in training methods since the Joe Louis era.

But Boxing is different to ANY OTHER SPORT

Because a boxer who has less than perfect technique can be a great fighter, whereas almost every other sport requires perfect technique to truly excel.

No one will win Wimbledon tennis, break sprinting or swimming records without near perfect technique. Will power cannot lift a sprinter to run the 100m a second faster, but indomitable will power can assist a boxer bent on an errand "thought to be impossible."

So boxing, unlike basically every single other timed, individual sport on earth, does not rely on being bigger, stronger, faster etc. You're looking at other sports like Tennis, Soccer and seeing the improvement in those and you think that this logic applies to boxing.

But, the big thing is that in every other sport, whilst doing your thing, it doesn't involve you getting punched in the face.

Boxing is the hurt business.

It's a primitive sport that doesn't rely on the stuff you think it does, and won't evolve in the same way and the history of the sport shows this over and over and over and over.

History has repeated itself a thousand fold with boxing. The bigger, stronger, faster guy does not equal the better guy. Then comes the body type. In boxing, it really makes no difference. We only need to look Andy Ruiz - AJ in the first fight. It's not a team sport, so an entire team of bigger, stronger, faster guys might mean something...but boxing doesn't work that way. It's just you and someone else punching each other.

You could make an argument that Maradona and Pele were better than Messi and Ronadlo, since you could go through the back of a player in their day and nothing would happen. You cud also argue Maradona and Pele's skills in their day had to be much better, playing on poor pitches getting booted.

Imagine Maradona and Pele today on these smooth bowling green pitches ? And a game today where you can barely touch a player ?

They'd run riot.

I stand by the fact that boxing is the least evolved sport

If we look at the act of punching each other in the face and make a similar graph as we might for baseball or soccer, the entire time that those sports have existed would look like a speck next to the entire time we have been trading blows. Getting better at fighting is an ancient process that evolves over a great amount of time.

 

Thanks for the well-reasoned answer, and we can indeed agree to disagree.

I 100% agree with the fact that Pele and Maradona had to excel in a much more physical and cutthrouat game of football, and indeed Ronaldo would probably be in tears with the treatment that Pele got in the 1958 World Cup.

Which is in itself an interesting facet of these hypotheticals - "prime for prime" has context involved, there's a big difference of taking a modern fighter and dropping them into a 15 round bout held in 1965 (god forbid 1930s!) vs a 60's fighter being dropped into a 12 round bout held now - again all IMO.

I do think the nutrition and sports-science side of things is still relevant (though weight cutting is NOT at heavyweight and maybe that's it's biggest plus point). For 80s onward fighters PED advanacements (and advancements in testing fighters) may also be a factor ('Roid' Jones, Holyfield for example - would they have achieved what they achieved if VADA etc was in place?)

One other thing I think is 100% something that is an evolution in boxing is the knowledge base and easy access to fights, history and many other things that can benefit a 'student of the game' that older fighters would not have had.

 

There is plenty to suggest that a fair few guys could/would have beaten him.

No, you could not put forward a valid argument that he’d have schooled everybody.

Every fighter has a stylistic nemesis.

Every one of them, past or present.

 

No, he wouldn’t have.

You’re just as ignorant as the nostalgics.

Usyk has done nothing to have been favoured over those guys.

We know that he’s vulnerable to body shots and fighting on the inside.

We know what his stylistic weaknesses are, just like how we know what they were for all of those guys mentioned.

We know that every fighter in history has stylistic difficulties against certain fighters.

There isn’t a fighter in history, at any weight, who didn’t face any stylistic difficulties.

That’s what makes the sport so beautiful.

Usyk is a genius. But he’s not invincible. He barely beat Mairis Breidis at CW.

He would not have beaten a guy like Mike Tyson. And it makes no difference if you think that he was better and ranks higher etc. Because it would have been a horrific stylistic match up for him, as he simply doesn’t possess the attributes needed to have kept Mike off of him.

 

Traditional ranking criteria is:

Ability
Overall quality of resume
Wins
Accomplishments
Longevity

Those are the main factors.

Then we look at the degree of difficulty/risks taken, the manner of victories and any losses etc, all whilst applying the relevant context needed.


Usyk is a tremendously skilled fighter who cleaned out a very deep and quality laden CW division. He fought quality fighters who were in their primes. But sadly, the CW division has never had much exposure and respect, and especially as most of the fighters aren’t known that much in the U.S.

He has then beaten the best guys at HW, twice each, whilst giving up size.

He has taken huge risks, and he’s gone out and fought the best in each division, where most of it has been on the road.

He is definitely an ATG.


Regarding a match up against Mike, there’s no way that he’d realistically have beaten him, due to the points that we’ve both raised.

It would have been a horrific stylistic match up for him.


I grew up watching Mike. He was an amazing fighter. If only he could have kept himself motivated and disciplined.

The trouble ranking Mike on a P4P list, is his lack of longevity. He only gave us 5 great years.

He would always rank in a top 10 HW list of mine, but I couldn’t rate him as high as what most people do, on an all time P4P list.

 

It’s not a great list. But it was very impressive how easily he beat most of those guys, and especially as he gave up size and was so young.

The Holmes and Spinks wins will always be impressive to me.

Spinks had proved himself to be a legitimate HW in his 2 close wins over Holmes. And Holmes was still a great HW then, and he was motivated to beat Rocky’s record. Now only a genuine world level HW could have beaten Holmes in 85 and 86. So we can’t just dismiss Spinks as being a blown up LHW. He proved that he was a legit HW.

Holmes had been inactive and was obviously past his best against Mike. However, he wasn’t rolled off of the couch after eating pizza for 2 years, like what most people claim. He’d been negotiating for the fight throughout most of 1987, and he’d had an exhibition fight. He was in shape. He had a full camp. His weight was on point. And he was motivated, where he’d said that Mike was overrated, and that he was going to go out and prove it with his jab.

What makes the win impressive, is the fact that Mike wiped him out, when nobody else in a 75 fight, 20 year career could. And 4 years later, Holmes pushed a prime Evander before beating a very good Ray Mercer at 42. So Larry wasn’t shot, and nobody else came close to beating him as effortlessly as what Mike did. So for me, he has to deserve credit for the win.

 

You’ve made some good points, and he’s obviously exaggerated.

He’s said things such as “Usyk wouldn’t have been able to have a landed a punch”

That’s obviously silly.

Regarding athletes improving over time, boxing absolutely does not progress in a continuous cycle.

And even if it did, where it was an irrefutable fact, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Simply because there’s too many fighters of different sizes, skills, styles and attributes.

Which means that even if every modern opponent was technically superior, they would still come unstuck against guys of a certain style.

Usyk would always have huge issues against guys like Marciano, Frazier and Tyson.

Style make fights.

That’s the beauty of the sport.

 

Usyk wouldn’t have beaten Mike.

He has nothing for Mike.

 

So you dismiss 8 world champions as drug addicts?

Cool what do you think Fury is? drug addict, plus 35 pounds overweight who barely beat a rookie mma fighter 12 months earlier.
AJ? he got destroyed twice.
Dubois? mentally deficient quitter like gollotta.

And that is Usyks body of work at HW.

Like I said its insulting to even compare the HW legacy of Usyk to Tyson.