What would Tyson Fury have to do for you to consider him an ATG?

I think you are on to something here. A lot of "great" heavies have thin resumes after the first few wins. If you look at Foreman's he is topping out his top ten with Bert Cooper and Qawi. Holmes' gets down to guys like Weaver and Leon Spinks.

I do think Fury needs to do a little more, but I don't think it is by any means an impossible dream.

 

The Ngannou fight is a big drag factor, and I should have mentioned it.

 

Joshua win would be decent but beating Joshua now wouldn't have same impact as it would've when both were champions.

As I said I think that ship has sailed Fury wasted too many years of his career on inactivity and pointless fights.

 

I respect it.

 

So it seems based on the responses that a ATG seen as more or less a top 10 heavyweight of all time.

 

Fury’s own fault for been a greedy belly a chasing what he thought was easy money instead of fighting Usyk. Had his credibility dropped even more when Joshua wiped the floor with ngannou an showed him how to deal with mma fighters

 

Go in a time machine to when he beat Whyte and stay retired.

 

I can name 20 who rank above him easily

 

And, like Vitali, his resume is horribly thin for how highly people rate him H2H...

That's the thing with guys who have resumes that lack depth and/or have asterisks next to their biggest achievements (and Fury checks both boxes) - it's very hard to be sure exactly how good they were.

My view is if he really was all that he had the opportunities to prove it, so why didn't he?

I'm not saying he wasn't one of the best fighters of the era, he clearly was, but I don't like giving credit for things fighters didn't do as a matter of principle.

 

Die

 

If the "great category" is top 10... Stay champ after beating Wlad in a rematch and defend against the top contenders like Wilder, Povetkin, Parker and Joshua, plus, say, Whyte and Chisora. If he does that before losing to Usyk, he's maybe in the conversation for top 10, but by no means a lock. And not only Joshua but also Povertkin are banana skins imo. And I'm not completely sold that he beats Wlad in a rematch either.

Tbh, I don't think he even defends against the likes of Povetkin, too much risk for too little money, and I doubt he ever fancied giving Wlad a second go. Joshua might be too much money to turn down, though.

In short, it's very, very doubtful he ever amasses a top 10 resume before finally being shamed and bought into facing Usyk.

 

reincarnate as a better fighter.

 

This is the issue with Fury. Had he not imploded in 2017, he could have defended his title enough times before Usyk even came along to retire as the best of his generation. Even if he had lost to Usyk after beating Joshua, Povetkin etc. people might have given him the benefit of the doubt and stated that his wear and tear lead to him losing to Usyk.

But i agree with you. He has never been serious about consistently fighting the best.

 

He has to come back and beat a string of dangerous contenders, something he’s never done in his entire career. Then hope to high heaven that Usyk goes undefeated for another 2-3 years so he can fight him again.